01 | How I fell in love with medical nursing... by complete accident

Let me ask you this: Have you ever felt like you’re just not getting what you want from your career?

If you’re nodding right now, I totally get it. I accidentally found my ‘home’ as a medical nurse in 2015 - but before then, I felt lost.

To the point where I didn’t really know if nursing was where I belonged… I felt like I was the wrong fit for the job, I was trying my hardest and just not getting anywhere like I had hit a complete ceiling in my career. I was running out of options on how to make things better - fast.

Long story short, I ended up falling into a medicine referral position, and very quickly realised that I had found the role that felt ‘right’ for me - but it took half of my career so far to get there!

So I wanted to kick off the first episode of the podcast with my story - how I went from feeling stuck to falling in love with medicine, and how medicine has impacted my career.

So I’ll tell you this - my career definitely hasn’t gone the way I planned.

I originally wanted to be a vet - like I’m sure a lot of us did - because I didn’t really know what nurses did.

It wasn’t until I started volunteering in practice that I saw the nurses, and realised how much of the backbone of the clinic they really were.

Fast forward a couple of years, and a bout of illness means I either drop out of my A-levels and give up on going to university, or retake the year due to leave.

I drop out a month later - and end up getting a student VN position a couple of months after that.

From there, I started training as a VN at 17, working in a small GP branch clinic. It wasn’t the smoothest of sailing, and looking back it was complicated by a lot of impostor syndrome - but I qualified a few years later, and after dipping my toe into surgical referral nursing and a management role in a large hospital, I stumbled across a new referral centre opening its doors.

I initially wanted to follow my first love - anaesthesia - but the department was full.

I spy a position for ‘Deputy Lead Medicine Nurse’ and decide to go for it - despite having no head nurse experience in a referral setting at all, nor any referral internal medicine experience. But thankfully, it worked out for the best and I LOVED it.

Most people don’t know what medicine nursing really is - we all know what an anaesthesia nurse does, and we know what a wards/inpatient care nurse does, but what about medicine?!

Well, the thing I loved the most about it was how varied the role is. One minute we’re consulting, then we’re doing inpatient care, then we’re in lab looking at slides and running samples. Then we’re monitoring a sedation, or on a scope, or placing a feeding tube… the list goes on.

And with the variation in our role comes a whole host of advanced nursing skills we can perform.

This is what I loved - it really showed me what was possible as an RVN.

It also inspired me to apply for the VTS in Small Animal Internal Medicine - which I did in 2018, sitting and passing my exam in 2019.

That same year, I moved to my current hospital - The Ralph Referral Centre - and set up the blog you’re reading now!

So I hope that my story provides you with a dose of inspiration about where medical nursing could take you, and helps you think about where you want to take your career in the future.

Did you enjoy this episode? If so, I’d love to hear what you thought - screenshot it and tag me on instagram (@vetinternalmedicinenursing) so I can give you a shout out, and share it with a colleague who’d find it helpful!

Thanks for listening, and I’ll see you next time!