Practice Development Lead Nurse
Addenbrookes Hospital

Vicky D

00:00:01 My name is Vicky D. My job title officially is Practice Development Lead Nurse and Rotation Managing Training Co-ordinator for Neurosciences. I guess I said officially because it’s such a long job title that, you know, people don’t understand really what does that mean. It really is essentially nursing, with some management bits added to it.

00:01:12 When I was growing up I had different ideas, you know, from – I think when I was five I wanted to be an astronaut even. It changed, it moved on to being a lawyer, and it got stuck actually there for quite a while. I end up I’m doing nursing by – by accident actually. When I was graduating in High School we were told to take an exam for this prestigious – huh – … University in the Philippines. And nobody gave me the – some guidance that if you fill in this application form and you write down your first choice as nursing, that that means you wanted to be a nurse. I thought that I could choose afterwards if I do pass the exam. And I did pass the exam, and I ask could I chose a different course then, I wanted really to do Occupational Therapy, and they said I’m sorry, but lots of people wanted to get your place, and you wrote this as your first choice, so no you have to stick to it. So I did, I stuck to nursing. Well you could go anywhere in the world and, you know, you could be a nurse.

00:01:37 I liked the idea of travelling, and I liked, you know, it gives that sense of adventure. When we were revising one day we got bored, and thought well maybe we should try to see what sort of jobs we could get out there. And we search on UK Jobs, and there were lots and lots of jobs at that time for nurses. So we started sending our CVs online, and managed to get lots of responses as well. I travelled with a friend of mine from University. We ended up choosing working for a Nursing Home. It’s a bit tough being away from home. I think my friend was more of the homesick one so I had to be the strong one.

00:02:20 We decided that Nursing Home’s not really for us, we’re so new to our careers, so early on in our career, we feel we’d like to practise what we’ve learnt, so I then realised I would like to be more in an acute setting. Then we came across this Cambridge advert and it’s saying an opportunity to work in neuro sciences as a rotation nurse, so they provided the training at the same time, you know, working as a nurse, in an acute setting. Up until that time didn’t really have any career plan it’s just – it’s just that we thought this is not really for us, so we need to find an alternative, or a different way. So I went to the hospital, and we chose Cambridge.

00:02:59 Suddenly I just woke up one day thinking – right, I would like to be in a position where I could influence how we’re doing things in our department. I’d like to be able to do better things, innovate. And in order to do that it has to be somewhere in the management. I’ve just been offered a secondment to a Service Improvement Consultant. We’ll be working towards – how do we improve our performance? And ultimately give the best patient care possible.

00:03:32 It’s very sad to know that the way I’m going will take me away from the bedside. Because that’s what kept me going, and that gave me a lot of satisfaction in seeing our patients get better. It’s wanting to influence how are things being done, and if the ultimate goal is to make the patients’, you know, care the best there is, then I would have to take that as part of the package.

00:03:37 ENDS