Examples
Emergency care
Such as emergency department and medical / surgical or orthopaedic admonitions.
A placement in an emergency area, other areas involves priority treatment for possible life threatening illness / injury, although you will observe the staff dealing with emergencies daily, this setting is also where you can enhance observation and assessment skills. Using the tools available to assess a patient’s status and then the handing over of that information in an appropriate manner to other health care professionals. As with many other clinical areas, you could be involved with an emergency one minute, and sitting quietly holding a patient’s hand the next.
Skills that can developed in this placement setting include:
- ABCDE assessment tools
- History taking
- Vital signs, concise levels, pain assessment
- Communication
- SBAR systematic handover
- Pain and nausea control
Planned/urgent surgery
Such as general or specialist such as orthopaedics, neurosurgery, or vascular.
- Skills that can developed in this placement setting include:
- Pre-operative assessments and preparation
- Post-operative assessments vital signs A-E assessment clinical decision making and reporting and specific post-operative care
- Recognising post-operative complications and early warning systems
- Communication, information giving and health promotion
- Discharge planning
- Medicines management, pain management
MedicineSuch as cardiac, respiratory, renal, rehabilitation, gastro-intestinal.
Medical Units cover a multitude of conditions and cater for long term conditions, patients undergoing investigations and awaiting diagnosis, ongoing treatments and addictive conditions. Allocation to a specialist area will provide you with in-depth understanding of that specialism. There will be scope to develop your understanding of how conditions can manifest, what behaviours can contribute to changes in lifestyle and the various methods of treatment.
Skills that can developed in this placement setting include:
- Symptom awareness
- Trigger and coping mechanisms
- Understanding of laboratory results
- Medications for specific illnesses
- Holistic care for the individual
- Nutrition / hydration / elimination needs
- Care planning / onward care
- Vital signs / assessment
Specialist NursesSuch as heart failure, stroke care, infection control, diabetic, research, oncology, haematology.
Specialist nursing teams provide specialist advisory care to clinical areas and patients many of them are consultant nurses with advanced skills in their field. Many of them lead nursing services, run clinics and hold a caseload of patients that they may see as outpatients as well as referrals of new clinical cases. Some teams work as speciality advisors such as infection control team. In the hospital environment they will teach and advise staff across all care settings. In addition, an insight in to telehealth and telemedicine.