Travel Nurse UK - NHS Experiences, Jobs, Work, Blogging, Tips

I’ve got two goals at the moment while working as an international nurse in London. The first is to successfully pass my OSCE first go, so I’m studying like anything, taking careful notes and asking my supervisor so many questions she’s just about going bonkers – well, I’d go bonkers in her place. I must sound like my four-year-old niece with all my questions. However, she did say that I need to ask plenty of questions, especially as some of the routines and practices are different here compared with back in New Zealand.

My second goal is to avoid the Heathrow Injection, which might be harder, as I love that bakery down the road! I have noticed a few of my clothes seeming a little tighter, but when I hopped on the scales at work during a quieter moment, I hadn’t put on too much. The other thing that has given me a bit of a reality slap was when I was practising with some of my fellow travel nurses working for the NHS in London (one Aussie girl got her job arranged through International Travel Nurse, same as me, lol – here is their website). It seems as though some of my vital signs (blood pressure and heart rate) aren’t as good as they could be – I think I’ve lost some of my overall fitness. Not a good sign.

Time To Huff And Puff

However, I have taken my own advice. When I get to work, I make sure I take the stairs rather than the lift. That’s something I do every time when I can. The trouble is that I’ve been having to wheel around a few trolleys and even the odd wheelchair-bound patient or two, which means that the stairs are out. I was wondering what I could do about this, but I had a chat with one of the physiotherapists who’s also doing healthcare work in London. This physio was with a post-surgery patient dishing out the usual advice about what not to do for how long after surgery when I had to come along and do the routine “On a scale of 1 to 10, how would you rate your current level of pain?” and dish out some paracetamol. It turned out that the physio had also been asking that patient to rate various other aspects of his life on a scale from 1 to 10, so the patient was a bit grumpy about me asking the same question. I might have to bring along the Wong–Baker faces chart that gets used for children and gets him to use that next time. I think he’s got the sense of humour to enjoy that. I’d like to repeat his comment about our use of scales from 1 to 10, but it included quite a bit of what would be classed as inappropriate communication that would probably see me failing my OSCE.

Anyway, when I was talking with the physio, it turns out that there is a small gym here in the hospital that the staff can use. Having access to a gym means that I won’t have to try going for a walk outside in the dark, rain and cold. It really does get dark early here in the UK as winter gets closer – much darker than it does even in a Southland winter in New Zealand. I saw a few Christmas decorations going up in some windows out of the train window on the way back from work today, and all those lights really make sense, seeing as it’s so dark so early. Starting tomorrow, I’m going to go on the exercise bike at the end of my shift before I go home and maybe try out some of the other machines they’ve got in the wee gym. There are some great perks to working with the NHS! I’m going to have to huff and puff a bit, but workouts will do my health and my shape some good.

The Joys Of Farmers’ Markets

The other way I’ve been taking my own advice has been to watch what I eat and save the trips to my favourite bakery for a weekend treat. And I’ve found a new strategy to help me eat more healthily – well, sort of. I overheard a visitor talking to one of the patients (you can’t help it sometimes in nursing work, but we know how to keep our mouths shut), and they were discussing the farmers’ markets. When I got home, I did a little homework, and it turns out that the farmers’ market scene in London is huge. There are some markets that make our little suburban markets in New Zealand look tame and pathetic. There are larger ones and smaller ones, and there are some that sell local produce only, and some that are more just open-air markets that sell everything. I decided to check some out and buy some fresh food, and do some cooking at home. After all, when in London, do as the Londoners do, with those Londoners including Jamie Oliver and Nigella Lawson (except her Marmite-coated pasta, which would probably be worse for my figure than the local bakery). Time to put the kitchen to good use.

I found a suitable market not too far from the flat I’m sharing with some of the other people doing travel nurse work in England that was open during one of my days off and set off on another public transport adventure. I have noticed a few people with lots of shopping bags on the train when I’ve been going to and fro, and I suspect that they have been to the markets. I would have asked one of my fellow commuters, but there seems to be this unwritten rule that nobody talks to anyone on public transport – it doesn’t even seem to be the done thing to talk to the people you get on and off the train with every day.

The market itself turned out to be as tempting as the bakery in some ways – in fact, there were several bakers with stalls on the site, and the smell was just as delicious in the open air as it was inside the shop itself. However, I was good. I only bought one loaf of bread from a bakery, and I let the other yummy sights and smells in the market seduce me as well. Given that it’s drawing into winter and things seem so cold, I wasn’t sure what would be on offer. OK, there’s not much variety in terms of fresh fruit in season, but there are plenty of apples. One odd thing that I noticed was that the varieties of apples here in the UK are different from the ones we get in New Zealand – I have only come across Cox Orange apples in my grandma’s back garden, but they’re as common as anything over here. I bought a good big bag of Cox apples, although when I munched one on the way home on the train later (I still can’t get over how you can do that over here), it made me a bit homesick for my grandma and brought back a few childhood memories. There were tons of vegetables as well, so I stocked up with old favourites like carrots, cauliflower and parsnips. I can see a few good coleslaws coming up! I would have bought some fish as well – the range of fish available in the market is amazing, but I guess I shouldn’t be that surprised, what with London being right on a river and a major international port and everything. However, I hadn’t got a separate bag to carry that back in. I’ve seen a few people in the hospital with food poisoning over my time working as a nurse, so I know better than to mix meat and veg in the same bag. Looks like some more tote bags are something I’ll have to invest in, as well as a good raincoat.

Well, I managed to get a decent night’s sleep and find my way back to the bakery to pick up a loaf of fresh bread for breakfast. I really couldn’t resist. I made my way past all those houses (they seemed so close together) to what seemed to be the shopping area near here. I didn’t think it was rush hour, but the traffic seemed really heavy – even at that time of the morning. I was also a little surprised to find an early morning queue in the bakery. You don’t see that sort of thing back in New Zealand – you’d only find a queue like that at fast food restaurants. Anyway, the bread was well worth waiting for, and it smelt delicious. So did the other bakery goodies. Looks like I’m going to have to watch my diet and exercise while I’m over here and avoid the notorious “Heathrow injection” (i.e., the extra 5 to 10 kg that New Zealanders and Australians travelling to the UK for work seem to pick up). I doubt a daily walk to the bakery would burn off some of those gorgeous-looking cakes and pies!

Anyway, I bought my ciabatta and a latte to go and walked back. The bread was still warm, and I couldn’t resist nibbling on a bit of the crust on the way back. I got back to the place I’m staying (arranged very nicely by the London travel nurse agency), which I shared with a couple of others who also have nursing jobs in London. Most of them are locals, but one is an Australian nurse working in the UK – I think she got her job through the same recruitment agency. I hadn’t eaten all of the loaves, and I thought sharing would be a good way to connect with my flatmates, so I put the loaf down in the kitchen. When I met one of the local nurses, I told her, “Help yourself to some of the bread on the bench – there are heaps.”

I got a blank stare in return, which left me scratching my head. Was I talking gibberish instead of English? Did my fellow nurse have ear bud in and the music up loud? I had to take an English proficiency test to get this London nursing contract (that’s standard for all foreign nurses working in the UK), and I assumed that this local nurse also spoke English, so I wondered why she was giving me such a funny look.

I led her into the kitchen and pointed to the bread. “Oh!” she said, realization breaking over her face like the sunrise. “You mean the kitchen counter. But… there’s only one loaf. Where’s the heap?”

“I mean, there’s lots of bread left, and all you can help yourselves if you like,” I replied.

“Yous? Anyway, thanks.”

At this point, the Australian nurse came into the kitchen. “You’ve got to speak the Queen’s – sorry, King’s – English now, mate. Poms don’t talk like us.”

How To Talk Like A Pom

And that was how I realized that although I am a native English speaker and passed that English proficiency test for nursing, New Zealand English is not like UK English. Although I knew I’d be all right when dealing with patients and doctors – medical terms are the same around the world, thank goodness – I’d have to be careful during the casual talk so I didn’t look like a right egg.

I found out that there are heaps (oops, lots) of differences between New Zealand English and real British English.

• That’s not a truck carrying goods; it’s a lorry. Be careful with a “lorry” as it could be a big heavy one or a ute. Not that I’ve seen any utes over here. They do have utes here – don’t they?
• I don’t put on a jersey when it gets cold (which I need to do now that the months have two digits and December gets closer); I put on a jumper. One of the other nurses, who aren’t originally from London, pronounces this jumper but don’t say it that way, or she’ll think I’m taking the piss… making fun of her.
• Don’t say yous. The Poms don’t use yous. They might think I’m talking about more than one female sheep (ewes).
• Don’t call the locals Poms. They have heaps of different words for people from different areas of the country, such as Brummies, Yorkies, Chissits, Scousers and Geordies, who come from Birmingham, Yorkshire, Leicester, Liverpool and Newcastle-upon-Tyne. I also came across the term “Monkey Hanger”, but I’m not sure if this was a leg-pull or (if it’s for real) if it’s offensive.
• Only say “heaps of” if there are actually things piled in heaps. Otherwise, I need to say “lots” or “many”.
• A heavily damaged building is a heavily damaged building rather than munted. Apparently, over here in London, some people use munted or something like it instead of drunk.
• If I get invited for tea, expect afternoon tea with a cuppa and a scone or some biscuits rather than a full meal, which is called dinner or supper. I’m grateful that biscuits are biscuits and scones are scones; in the US, biscuits are cookies, and scones are biscuits.
• Footwear is easy to trip up on. No more sneakers, gumboots and jandals – I need to call them trainers, wellies and flip-flops.
• Bangers are sausages.
• Chips just mean the sort you get with fried fish. The thin round ones in bags are crisps.
• The popular sport is called football, not soccer. Nobody refers to rugby as football or footy.
• Just call it the toilet, loo or lavatory (or lav) if you have to refer to it at all, rather than the dunny.
• I still do not know what the Poms call a chilly bin or a bach (I must stop calling them Poms).

I did all this research, so I thought I’d be sweet as – no worries! However, I still managed to get funny looks when I said I was going to nip down to the dairy for some milk. Apparently, they call it a corner store here, not a dairy.

The Plot Thickens… And So Do The Accents

The fact that the English they speak in London isn’t quite the same as the English we speak in New Zealand isn’t going to be the only thing to get used to. As I found out, when filling in time by watching a TV cooking show put out by the BBC, they don’t all have the same accent. I just about needed subtitles for some of the people talking on that show. I kind of expected to hear Scottish and Irish accents, but I forgot about all those other accents over here in the UK – even within London, you can hear the plummy BBC English as well as something else that sounds a bit like the Australian accent, except it isn’t. Wonder what it’s going to be like if I get patients who come from these different regions. That was something I didn’t have to deal with as a nurse in New Zealand – it’s only the people from Southland who have a distinct regional accent, and everybody else more or less sounds the same.

However, what threw me the most when watching that show was this Indian chef who looked as Indian as you can imagine. I thought he’d have a heavy accent, like one of the doctors I worked under during my nursing training. He had a heavy accent, all right, but it wasn’t the accent I was expecting: it was Scottish. The modern-day UK really is multicultural and diverse. There are heaps of different ethnicities over here – and I’ve gone and used “heaps of” again! Here’s hoping that the refresher course arranged by the London nursing recruitment agency will help me get out of this habit.

I have decided to start travelling the world. My first stop will be in the UK. Or at least this is what the plan is. I love nursing, and I love travelling. If I can combine the best of both worlds, that would be awesome.

It turns out it’s not as bad an idea as it sounds at first. I have been looking for UK-based agencies that offer jobs for Australian and New Zealand nurses in UK hospitals, mainly NHS hospitals. There are not as many as I would have wished, but still, the choice is enough so I can start researching. One needs to be careful in reading the small print of employment contracts. Just signing it blindly can lead to misunderstandings at a later stage.

So, in order to provide you with my best personal initial advice on how to become a travel nurse in the UK, I will start from the very beginning. This is how it goes.

My name is Gemma Vendraft. I live in Melbourne, Australia. Born and bred in the City of Boroondara. I became an RN (Registered Nurse) after I got my Bachelor of Nursing degree from the University of Melbourne. Ah, these were wonderful years. All the fun we had. Anyways. I have decided to go travelling the world. The UK seemed like the first logical destination. From there, I was planning to hop across the pond and visit the US.

I wanted to be fully independent therefore, I decided to work and live in the places I travel to. That makes my stay more sustainable and does not require large amounts of cash. All I need to do is get myself a nursing job, buy a plane ticket and have a couple of thousand pounds/dollars in my pocket. That will start me off nicely.

The biggest of the abovementioned hurdles is finding an agency or company that can provide you with a work placement as a nurse in the UK. You need to do your due diligence. Get those Google searches going. Read carefully and keep an open mind. You will find the most attractive offer that suits your requirements. Just be patient. It doesn’t happen overnight.