RE: General practice to referral

Alison Clare Hickman — Mon, 16 Jan 2017 19:57:28 GMT

IME:

Referral nursing tests you and your skills/knowledge daily. That's a fun thing. You certainly don't go stale!

You don't get the continuity of seeing the same patients, true, but when you do get that critical patient better, well - it's like winning the lottery and I floated home on a high on those days. You do get to spend a lot of time with individual patients over an acute, continuous, period of time of days/weeks; more so than in general practice when it is usually in/out same day or visiting once monthly for preventative admin, say. Both reward you, in different ways.

I did get to mainly forget about preventative doses and Healthcare plans and puppy classes etc etc - but I did have to learn a whole raft of new drug doses and protocols. The change was challenging at first and my little black book was chock-ful of notes and reminders; I didn't have pockets so much as panniers each side with my equipment in!

The specialisms learned at referral were very useful when I returned back into general practice.

I'd report a win-win (for me) for the experience.

Go for it!

Ali h