I recently attended a Practice Educator course (PEd) which, once passed allows you to be allocated a student to mentor for a set period of time.  The course, run over less than a day, aims to get you prepared to deal with such things as, the student’s “signing off document”, or how to be a good role model to the future of our front line health care professionals – or more importantly, what do to if the student is a complete idiot. 

We now have a student – a first year university chap by the name of Joey*.  Joey started with us two night shifts ago – and thank god, he’s a bright, enthusiastic, positive, happy lad . . . with a typical baby face.  His credentials should definitely see him fight off the imperialistic yoke of cynicism.  For a short while at least.

On his first night I introduced him to various other members of staff and showed him around the station, bombarding his sponge like brain with millions of pieces of information that he will inevitably forget.  Afterwards we sat down and made a strategic plan of what would be expected of him over the next few weeks.

And then we went green mobile – waiting for our fist job of the evening. Within minutes the handset radio burst into song, indicating that our super hero life saving skills were required somewhere in London.  I looked across at Joey’s half nervous, half excited face before jumping up with over exagerated eagerness.

“You ready to go save a life?!”

There was a theatrical pause before both Marvin and I burst into laughter.

“Ha ha ha ha, sorry Joey, just kidding . . . let’s go kill someone”

And off we went for what turned out to be, an average night with average “clients”.

Binder

*not his real name of course

NB more to come . . .