How To Stop Gripping Your Callbell and Start Holding Your Spoon Correctly

I'm on a weekly course, mostly on thursdays and will last till Oct.

It's a neurorehabilitation course.

At these courses, I get to meet folks from TTSH rehab side, the Ang Mo Kio Hospital. Nurses, doctors, physios, occupationals, case coordinators, social workers, STs and psychiatrists alike. All offering a rehab perceptive.

It's a different one, for starter - they like to call us the 'Main Side'.

'How is it like at the main side?'
'Do you encounter such things in main side?'
'Nurses from main side, what do you think?'

And we all work for the same bosses.

The reason that I write this note is that through these courses of endless role-playing, discussions and simulations, I've realized that TTSH rehab is a very good place to work in, especially as a nurse.

For starter - I have never seen any follow up speech after self introduction by any presenters is to thank the nurses rabidly. It also appears that thanking nurses is mandatory for every of their closing statements.

I've almost forget how nice it is for nursing to be appreciated and acknowledged by fellow colleagues.

Nurses at Rehab have a major role to play in patient's rehabilitation journey. Rehab nursing is team focused where nursing input is tremendously vital. With the mindset that patients' probable final destination after Rehab will be their homes, Rehab team has stop cuddling their patients and push them to fend for themselves so that they can survive themselves when they are discharged. Nurses urge and push patients to feed themselves, shower themselves, use their walking frames appropriately and be responsible for their own well being because a world post stroke or spinal injury is a terrible world to be in and the Rehab team has to whip them into shape.

Interacting with Rehab nurses, they shown a very vibrant enthusiasm and optimism towards their work culture and their colleagues. The Rehab team; therapists and nurses alike KNOW all of their patients! Just give them a bed number and they start to have their mini case conference right during the course presentation, leaving the folks from the 'Main Side' bewildered.

Which they will always be kind to ask, 'How about the Main Side then?'

Two weeks into the course, I've learn to stop explaining to my patients that Rehab is a place for exercises. That's that. I now know how to point at their call bells and reply, 'We are here to give you that, but in Rehab it's their turn to wean you off from that.'