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Gurdev Suri

Gurdev Suri - Wolverhampton PCT

00:00:00 My name is Gurdev Suri and I'm a ward sister at West Park Hospital. As a ward sister I am actually a team leader for my team. I have to be responsible for everything that goes on day to day with my job, make sure that the referrals are done, admission are in and discharges are planned, patients are sent home or wherever they need to be sent safely and everything is in place.

00:00:27 I enjoyed going to school, I enjoyed my lessons and I think it was at school it was like having the freedom to talk to other children, talk about what they used to do and their interests. I did like that. When I left school and I went to college with an aim to be a teacher. But then my sister started her nurse training and she'd come home and tell me her stories about how interesting she was finding her job and all the different things she did and looking after the patients made me think that I would like to do something like that.

00:01:03 So, then I decided to apply and be a nurse so I applied and started my training. I started off as an enrolled nurse which was a two year course. I knew that I could go to any other part of the country and get a job without much difficulty in that that time. So, I applied and got a job at a hospital in London where I moved to. I worked in London for about five, six years and then my marriage broke down which meant that I had two young children to bring up on my own so I came back to Wolverhampton where my family were.

00:01:37 And then I'm thinking, you know, I've still got my career, nobody can take that qualification away from me so I then applied to a nursing home and worked part time for about six, eight years. It was difficult at times and really stressful because when you're at work you need to focus on your job, forget about your personal life and I found that balancing the two was quite difficult but then I still found my job really rewarding and then I'd thought to myself, "Now I really want to progress now, I've been an enrolled nurse for a good number of years, I want to become a staff nurse and find and get other opportunities."

00:02:14 Opportunity came for me to do my conversion course which was a full time course for a year. That was really stressful. You know, because I wanted to prove to myself and to everybody else, really, that, yeah, I could do this, become a staff nurse and still bring up my two children on my own. So, 12 months hard slog it was, you know, I'm still working, studying and looking after the children but I did it. And then when I qualified as a staff nurse it gave me such a proud feeling to say, yeah, I've done it.

00:02:46 I like helping patients and I like it when they've come to my ward and I like to see them walking out and that makes the job really worthwhile. I do find now that the position I'm in that my job has changed quite a lot. Whereas when I first started it was patient care, hands on. Now I find it's more office based and on the days when I do actually get to nurse, get a patient out, it's wonderful because you know you've done something and that 's what I was trained to do.

00:03:18 It's made me a much stronger person. I've become more confident than what I was when I finished school, say, or even during my training. As time has progressed, I've seen a change in myself. I'm much more confident now. The next step for me after being a ward sister would actually to be a ward manager. I don't think I'm quite ready to take on that position at the moment, I'm still quite new into the position I am doing.

00:03:47 So, I want to build up my confidence in being a ward sister before I decide to do anything else but, yeah, I can still myself nursing up till the day I retire, really. It's a job I do love and I couldn't see myself doing anything else.

00:04:05 ENDS