More pills than a drug dealer! That’s how today felt.  It’s been a really tough one; possibly the toughest one in my short career so far and definitely one I will be recording for my revalidation. I won’t tell you the effect that it’s had on my bowels but let’s just say I won’t be needing my prunes in the morning. So what would make me feel like this? Did a resident die? Thankfully not. Did I accidentally harm a resident in my care? Thankfully not – I don’t think I could forgive myself. No…I made a medication error. I was back at Sunshine after a 10 day enforced break. Charisma told me that the Manager had barred me from the premises after I had ‘shown her up’ with my recent CQC/QVC bonding session. She told me not to worry, “she would soon want me back. Unless hell had frozen over and they were fully staffed, they’ll be understaffed again before long and can’t do without agency staff forever”, apparently.  So there I was knocking on the door this morning...

Today was another ‘first’ for me. It was my first encounter with CQC and as I sit here on the usual bus ride home, I can’t help feeling that I didn’t do too bad at all. I was at Sunshine Retirement Home again; my first visit since Christmas Eve when we put on the epic pantomime. When I arrived in the morning, the staff were raving about it still and had decided, much to the disapproval of the Manager, that the residents had had such a good time that they would like to continue with the choir through the year. They had planned the first practice for that afternoon and I promised I would pop my head in to see how they were doing. I’d not long got back from my break when Mrs G’s daughter rushed up to me and started telling me about how the pantomime had given her Mum a new lease of life and she had decided she would like to get up that afternoon! I won’t lie, my jaw hit the floor, I was in shock. Mrs G hadn’t been out of bed for months despite us all trying to encourage her. S...

You will NOT believe what happened to me last week! It was the day of the pantomime to end all pantomimes and it was Christmas Eve, so everyone was excited. I was working at Sunshine Retirement Village. I arrived nice and early as I wanted to go over the arrangements for the pantomime that we had been working on, a dress rehearsal of sorts. A good few residents were playing key parts so I wanted to make sure that they were fit and well and that none of the staff had gone on the sick with stage fright. We’d been practising forever and sent lots of glittery invitations out to everyone we could think of. We’d even sent one to the Mayor but he couldn’t attend because he was already starring in his own local council pantomime as the back end of the donkey – no joke, that’s what we were told! Anyway, there I was flicking through the rota when the night nurse came in all flustered and told me that the Home Manager had called in sick and that I was in charge of the home for the nex...