[Music] good evening everybody uh if you were just screaming at the screen saying we can’t hear you we can’t hear you yes I know I’ve got a brand new waiting screen which uh just involves me on the camera because it gets people’s attention a little bit better good evening welcome along it is Inspire and be inspired uh our weekly motivational conversations with the occasional life hack thrown in for good measure if it’s the first time you happen upon this my name is Andy Ward it’s a pleasure to have your company tonight we are discussing the Confessions of a nurse an NHS nurse a lady who’s had over 30 years experience working for the NHS and a beautiful lady that many of our friends will be more than aware of it’s a fully interactive conversation so please do feel free to leave any messages and also the way I’ve got things set up now if you like the video or if you share the the video you’ll see some flashy new graphics come up and it all helps for the engagement it helps a lot more than you know actually so if you could like the video and maybe share it it would really go a long way I always start off by saying if you are watching the recording then welcome along and also feel free to comment on anything that we say because myself and my guest will see all of the replies uh I can see here that we have the lovely Andrea Sarah Mrs Wards Mr Miller Debs Gary Katrina good evening everyone thank you for being here much appreciated uh and you see the graphics start to Ping up on the screen uh a little later than usual to try and get as many of you watching as possible and towards the end of the show if you keep watching uh if you didn’t see it at the weekend you’ll get a sneak peek at the whole new setup here in the studio uh We’ve even got some fancy lights behind us anyway without further Ado let me bring on my esteemed guest and say good evening good evening good evening uh Angela colossi our uh wonderful nihs nurse how are you you all right I’m all right thank you Andy and it’s nice to hear that on the amongst friends as well so that that makes it a bit less daunting we have quite a few friends watching I’m just moving some graphics out the way there because I could see already they were messing around uh I do my best to try and make everything look as smooth as possible and I always make a rod for my own back because it always goes wrong at the last minute so that’s all good um as you know because you do listen to a lot of the recordings we try to make it as interactive as possible you and I will be deep in conversation occasionally I will stop and draw reference to uh the people who are commenting and I’ll welcome along also Dawn O’Connor uh also we have Yvonne uh Ralph in Germany Phil Madison Lynn Henson uh they’re all rolling in thick and fast so thank you for being here guys I’m gonna try a thing two times yeah everybody feel free to chip in I will do my best to read uh all of the comments uh and you saying that actually I have a window let me try something if I change this screen um what’s going on yes All of the comments are there so I’ve changed the window so that it brings it up onto the screen I’m can you read those or is that text really small no your yours uh page is Frozen for me oh really it might not be that’s probably my wife or whatever no I think yeah I think it might be myself um so yeah we can see all of the people there so um people we’re only broadcasting on on Facebook now so people can read all of the comments anyway so I don’t actually need to broadcast those again on to the screen Andy Mills joins us good evening sir how are you thanks for being here um uh Joanne Hill also um and Andrea is saying she keeps getting the sound cutting out if anyone else notices the sound cutting out please let me know it could be something to do with the way that I’ve got my OBS set up um but I’m not going to be changing anything now so everything should be okay he says um if it’s my cutting out I could put my earphones back on and look like I’m at work no it’s not you it’s not you people are saying um it’s buffering it’s lagging um let me see about this uh changing let me see if I can change any settings getting a lot of buffering people are saying it might be no I don’t think it’s anything to do with me maybe if I stop messing around let’s see if it settles down let’s see if it settles down it might be because I was changing some scenes and whatever um if it is actually too bad for people to hear it then I’m not really sure what I can do about that but anyway uh five minutes of fashion about let’s just have the conversation you and I and then hopefully uh it will calm down and people will be able to uh participate so you and I met um at some points on the clubbing landscape more than likely courtesy of the Southport Weekender message board and then subsequently uh we probably would have rubbed shoulders uh and shared a beer on a dance floor and then in recent years we’ve got to know each other quite well uh thanks to you joining us at the vocal booth Weekender um you have a long history in the club in scene you began um quite early on and I’m still getting a lot lots of notifications that the buffering is really bad so I because we’ve got so many people watching I want to try and fix this um because I’m looking at it on Facebook and it is it’s you where neither of us are moving I don’t know if people can hear us but we’re certainly not moving on the screen right okay so you can’t see me at the moment let me change the camera I can see you on Facebook yeah yeah but we don’t like that so can you see me no that’s the wrong camera right so now you can see me correct and you’re moving just fine and you’re in sync so okay so let me see if me disabling something has made any difference to the buffering the sound is okay just the picture has frozen um too many windows open yeah computer says no what can I close down let me shut oh it’s okay now I’ll sort it I know what it was I was trying to be flash trying to show you uh I feel saying it’s okay that’s better right okay better now good we got there we got there so it’s worth testing these things that’s me trying to be clever clubs um so it is nice because the whole point of this is for people to to listen and participate so um we all know what kind of Windows people are saying I’m going to ignore the comments for the time and get focused that they’re all talking about my uh porn addiction probably allegedly um so yes let’s begin uh again we spoke about we would have met via the Southport Weekender Message Board eventually we would have uh shared a beer on the dance floor somewhere and then in recent years you’ve become a a big fan of the vocal booth Weekender and we enjoy one end of this company not nearly enough maybe once a year over here in Spain um you have been listening to the shows you enjoy the the variety of conversations that we have and when I reached out and asked if anybody would like to uh put forward some suggestions on what we can talk about you uh actually somebody else put your name forward and can you remember who it was Stu Miller okay so fair play to Stew the Boo’s hand um I’d forgotten his name yeah yeah boo saying she feels like five minutes ago right 20 years ago it’s crazy um and I asked if you would have the the nerve to do this and of course you spend a lot of time on Zoom calls and teams and meetings so you’re not shy at all and of course you were the the proud winners of the competition that we did the quiz that we’ve done uh in the middle of the pandemic yeah awesome thanks to me that was Rick y it’s got a lot of knowledge uh I’m being told I am being told there’s a lovely pic of the back of my head I was there a picture of the back of my head I mean look on Facebook see if I can see that should be okay it should be broadcasting like this to the front it’s frozen on on my Facebook again no shame yeah let me have a look I gotta mute this make sure that no it looks okay it looks alright anyway uh I think it might just be for different people if everyone tries refreshing their Windows refreshing their screens so let’s let’s get to the Crux of this you uh you were born more or less what kind of year were you born so okay well people were good questions I’m willing to share it 1964. well I was gonna say people will be able to work it out from the maths anyway when we when we start telling telling them about the years you were going out and whatever so you would have started clubbing in the early 80s should we just put it like that no late 70s okay yeah I was working in a nightclub at 16. okay tell us all about that then um crumbs so I was trying to leave home from about the age of 15 um typical rebellious teenager um very independent fiercely independent and um uh so yeah so I I started going out quite a lot and I ended up working in in pubs and clubs from the age of 16 so then eventually my dad’s uh allowed well my mum and dad let me go at 17 because I just kept trying to leave and with my carrier bags and my dad had come and pick me up and take me home again so um so I left home at 17. so I and I knew I wanted to be a nurse and I knew I wanted to be a dancer I wanted to do those two things because I’d done tap and ballet and festivals and pantomimes and things like that as a child um but I couldn’t start my nurse training because I was only 17. so you had to be 18. so I went and um uh sofa surfed with friends who were much older than me from the age of 17 um 17 and a half and then when I was finding the 18 I could then finally um start my nursing myself a little bed sit so I was living independently what was that desire what was the huge desire for you to get out of the house um I it was that a bit personal it’s sort of linked to why I became a nurse actually okay so um so I the only way I’m going to say is that there wasn’t much demonstration of affection um and I can’t really go into any more than that I went over there um but basically I thought I wanted to become a nurse because um I’d read uh the ladybug book of nursing the nurse you know those little lady book series um and I thought yeah I want to be a nurse I had a little nurse outfit when I was a child so I thought yeah I’d like to be a nurse then I watched Angels which was a 1980s sort of program on telly um or no 70s actually um about a group of student nurses um who then became nurses and I thought yeah that’s what I want to do so that’s what that’s what I thought that I thought that was the reason why I wanted to be a nurse but when I did my Florence Nightingale leadership scholarship only a few years back we did three days at Raja at the Royal Academy of dramatic arts and um my goodness what an eye opener those three days were so it was all about presentation and um you know self-awareness and confidence building really as a presenter but the last task that we had we had five minutes to decide why it was we wanted to be a nurse and we had to present that to they got the CEO in of Florence Nightingale um foundation and a little audience so so we’re all sitting in a semicircle and where as you got up and did your piece then you chose the next person and all of a sudden I was back in the playgrounds waited to be picked for the netball team and thinking why is no one picking me and I’d have this awful feeling of insecurity lack of being loved it all just flooded flooded over me and I so when it came to my my turn I wasn’t last or second to last but I stood up and I I told them I said I had all this story prepared that it was because of the ladybird book and angels and and all the rest of it I said but as I’ve been sitting here I’ve realized that the reason I’ve wanted to become a nurse all this time is because I spent a lot of time in hospital as a child I was in with measles appendicitis tonsillectomy adenoidectomy and I wanted to replicate that hearing loving affectionate um role of the nurse and the impact and the role modeling that gave me as a small child so that is actually why I left home early and why I became a nurse okay so that all ties in that all ties in perfectly um okay well I’m sure that will pop back up again at some point in the future when when we’re when we’re conversing so uh sofa surfing and you you finally you finally be kept so before we start talking about the nursing let’s talk more about your your early Club in working in the clubs and being a dancer yeah so so the dance of it wasn’t in clubs um so so uh Club in Wise I went to like the local we had a little disco at the Blind Center where it was oranges and biscuits so that and that was when Earth Wind and Fire and Peaches and Herb and um noisy peaches and cream you know that reunited because it was that era anyway so we had all those sort of school disco type things and then um I remember being a member of the Hastings horny hapsters which was in those days we had groups so at the club so at the end of Hastings Pier we had a really big ballroom and it was a really good club night on a Friday um there were the Eastbourne Earls and it was gangs of soul soul Soul people that would all come together you’d all wear the same outfit and you’d all dance and do stupid things it was great so that was sort of like that was that bit the clubbing and then um uh then I discovered Caster at the age of 17 um went to coaster um that was my love for the weekenders did press that in um Barry Islands oh God all of those swelli that was another one so Bogner did all of those um sort of weekenders in the South really um but also the the soul aspect of it and the and the music taste and everything that’s why I really love Collins talk because he was he was in London and that was sort of the clubs that he went to the same as what Rick went to and and I knew about um so yeah it all sort of tied in really but the re the dancing part of it was um I’d been qualified for six months so I did my training in 83 to 86. I’ve been qualified for six months on a surgical Ward and then I got this my mum gave me a newspaper that she bought from wh this called the stage and it had an advert in there to go to Pineapple Studios because they wanted crew staff and dancers on a cruise liner so um I I had the day off so I went up there for something to do really so there were all these all these people I was I was just going to watch but there were 200 girls and they wanted five um dancers for Royal Caribbean cruise liner um the smallest ship of the fleet the Sun Viking and um I got down to the last 20 and then I got and then I came back the next day and they got down to eight and then they shuffled us around and they wanted like the Spice Girls so they wanted a blonde one a dark one you know it was a bit like that really and but in two weeks time I was in Miami and that’s where I met Rick so that was the dancing part of me fantastic and so when you say dancing all very Cabaret kind of yeah it was um it was a proper show girl um feathers and uh and we did uh two reviews show a week so that was all with them Broadway musicals so we did Hello Dolly in Oklahoma and all that sort of stuff and then we did Cabaret nights where we do all the Americans sort of you know with the voters and the red white and blue stripes and all that sort of stuff tap routines so yeah it was a real but I’ve got really really bored towards the end of that so after about a year Rick had finished his contract and he was back in London and I got I got offers of marrying Rich Americans and going to Canada and I I had an offer from the agency that I worked for to go and work on land I could have done more on the ships I was bored stiff I really was bored you know um it was if I heard one more girl talk about what letter says she’d eat in that day I thought and I was always getting told off by the line manager because I always ate too much so um I used to say to me you’re putting on white and just stop going to the midnight buffet and um so uh so then I started buying nursing books and started reading books about nursing and emergency care and all that sort of stuff so when after that I went so after the contract finished I I had a bit of an odd choice because I had a choice to go back to Hastings and marry my long-term eight-year boyfriend who was saying come home or to go and honestly you had a fling you had a fling on the boat then Rick was a fling yes so then I had the choice of going back to Hastings and back to my life as was all going to London with Rick so I chose the letter and the rest as they say is history so um so I went back to London and got straight back into nursing um I work for agencies for for quite a long time so I was in sort of some highlights or moments that I remember really well um I was on the night of the king’s Crossfire so I was working in itu at the time and had to look after this poor lady who was just oh you could see the only pink bit of this person’s body was her lips where the the tube was in the rest of her was just black Char it was horrendous we had um uh firemen that came in you know where their hands were completely burnt it was really horrific that night um and I never got rid of that smell for quite a long time of you know burning it was horrible so um yeah so just just remind me then because I’m listening to you in my mind drifted off there so you were working always in the itu that was that was your role yeah predominantly so I’d only been qualified six months remember and then I’d gone off and done a year on on the ship so when I came back when you work for an agency especially in London it’s a bit you’re being at the deep end so they phoned me up one day and they said to me um because I did a bit of Charing Cross on the general Awards and that and then they said uh guys need um an itu nurse and I said well that’s not me and they said oh they only need a pair of hands you’ll only be a pair of hands so of course by the end of the uh of the night I was looking after an intubated patient ventilated patient under supervision of course but you know you pick it up quite quick and actually I to you nursing I always found found easier it’s easier than having sort of like 10 to 14 patients with with varying needs having to look after all of them with itu nursing you’re just looking after one person so it’s it’s it was actually um I just loved it I loved it because at the end of the shift I knew that I’d done everything for that person that I could possibly do so um that that became my my role of choice so my role of expertise so okay and so you’re always having to uh study I suppose is the right word or constantly learning and going through because you as your um the need expands for different circumstances you’re always having to keep on top of the game yeah so you’re always learning on the job always we also now have a requirement that we do have to do continual professional development and we need to be able to demonstrate that every three years to in order to re-register but back then that wasn’t the case at all and actually my my um academic sort of studying stopped at that point really while I was in London and if you skip forward to 2001 so there was a whole heap of stuff in between that you skip forward to 2001 I’d had five years off to look after our four children three choice because the the amount of child care I just didn’t want to be I wanted to be a mum at home with them when they were young um so I chose to do that but when I went back to nursing in 2001 um I’d missed it by a month so so you could do if it was uh four years and one and 11 months you could come back to the hospital do a little return to practicing re-register and you’re away but I missed it by a month so I had to predominantly do my whole training again right so I had to do my diploma um which was a three-year course so whilst working as a registered nurse so it was a return to practice thing but I could they wouldn’t register me until I’d done that so so for 10 years I did my diploma in um General Nursing I did my bachelor’s honors degree in District nursing so I became a district nurse and I then did my masters in advanced practice so that was back to back for 10 years whilst working full-time and looking after four under tens so it was it was um I couldn’t have done it without Rick Rick was we were doing it together as a team because he was my rock you know and what was his what was he doing what was his uh position in life at the time yeah so so when I went back to nursing um Rick when I had that five years off with the children Rick was the breadwinner so um he would go to London mini cabin um okay every weekend um he worked in a tire so he’s a tire expert um he also worked during that time he also worked um in uh yeah so so whilst I was at home with the kids he was working at a local fish and chip restaurant um with a fantastic Greek bloke called Johnny and the pair of them together were hilarious absolutely hilarious they had the best time ever um so he’d do that during the week and then at weekends he’d do mini cabin as well um but you know we we did it together as a team and we didn’t go out anywhere for literally for 15 years we literally did not go out um we we tried once to go to the to the cinema and it was a disaster we came home fairly quickly so so the first time we went out was Southport Weekender Rick said to me I’ve because I said look I need a night out like we’ve got to start going out the kids are all old enough now um the oldest one can babysit it and he said oh I’ve heard of this really good Weekender and it looks like the DJs the music quite good it’s called Southport and we went to South Court 40 and the rest is history what year what year was that oh comes I know you can ask me that I’ve got a question roughly 2007 2010 um so Verna would have been a babysitting age so if you call it and no and more importantly my mum and dad would look after the four of them because they rolled enough oh crumbs I really don’t know she was born in 92 so call it 2000 and around about 2005 to six okay because it because the reason I was asking at the height of this Southport weekend uh message board it would have been 2001 2002 you would have been vicariously living your Club in night on that Forum without going out but just reliving it kind of thing no but I don’t think it would have been not afford like I would have gone to Southport fairly soon after so maybe it was a bit earlier than that Andy or maybe maybe it was a bit later on because I I relate my times I relate my history to when we moved to Spain and how active I was on the forums and so it was like 2002 2004. uh we’re still getting people come into another way through thank you guys as I said before I don’t really want to interrupt and lose the trainer conversation um so we’re talking about I had a couple of points that I wanted to ask you the um the early days of working for the NHS um when we were talking and I I made that quite tongue-in-cheek graphic with the you know the the stereotypical uh nurse in the in the the uniform with the stockings and you said I’d I’d like to have a little bit more respect for the profession Andy can we can we not have a an image with the nurse showing the stockings and suspenders even though we all used I don’t think no all my profession but actually we did that’s exactly what we looked like in the early days you know 80 through 84. the old boys had a field day you had to get the mark suspense as Petticoat because you had suspenders and stockings are today so you know it was that was a depiction of what it was like it was a matron back then um and and it’s really interesting because I looked at the the book of the ladybird book of Nursing and uh and read a read a page of it and it it actually says doctors in the hospitals find out about the patient’s illnesses then the doctors tell the nurses what to do to help patients to get better the nurses carry out the doctor’s orders and care for the patients until they are well enough to go home honestly it couldn’t be further from the truth now it really could not be further than the truth we haven’t got enough trained any of any profession to manage the demand that is being placed upon the Health Care system in this country so so therefore the roles are being blurred so so nurses do more of what doctors traditionally did physios do more of of what doctors nurses traditionally do so so there’s almost like a a basic assessment that you could do for holistic assessment you could do for a patient and the differential diagnosis that come out from that could be your local pharmacist it could be a nurse practitioner it could be an advanced clinical practitioner it could be an ODP Andrea so you know it the roles are blurred now so that that depiction couldn’t be further from the dream but back in the day yes that’s what nurses were were I think they had a lot more respect well I was just about to say there was a huge badge of honor associated with being a nurse but then it was it was seen as very glamorous it was you know it was seen um again as a noble profession to be in um were the wages I have no clue with the wages good back in the day or were they I always been useless I got 400 pounds a month so that my training was paid for that was enough for me to live on back then we we’ve done ourselves a site disservicing that we’ve pushed to be an all-graduate profession so our physiotherapy colleagues are um occupational therapy colleagues their their degree trained and we never were it was always um that we did our three-year nurse training it wasn’t linked to an academic um a healthy education institution so it wasn’t linked to a university so we fought hard to become a degree degree profession but but because of that we now have to do a degree and that costs 27 000 pounds so you know like like any kid that wants to do a degree now they have to fund it themselves don’t they so so there is an apprenticeship Levy that will pay for it but the problem is nowadays there isn’t the salary backfill money to pay student nurses to do their training so or at least the the funds are very limited and it’s all dependent on your your board and their um your Finance director and what funds are available and of course we’re all living in a period of austerity now um you know not just personally and privately but the NHS in you know we’ve got they’ve spent billions on covid and they’ve got to pay that back somehow so so we’re being asked to make Cuts as much as any other government Department um so so you know the wages the wages were a livable wage as a student nurse and then when you got paid again it was a it was a livable wage but but as it’s well publicized the rates are pay you know haven’t gone up with inflation so it it’s it’s a not a bad wage when you when you first qualify as a student as a you know as a trained nurse but if you’re a single parent with three kids you’ve got no hope you can’t live on that you know it’s cheaper to to be on housing benefit probably you know it’s really it is it’s really really tough and I I I’m well paid but I’ve worked really hard to get to this position to be well paid I got to in my clinical work I got to nurse consultant level so so it’s okay for me because I I can retire fairly soon whereas my children if they wanted to go into nursing you know they they’ve got a lot longer to work really and and it’s it and it is an exhausting job there’s no getting away from it you invest physically emotionally mentally psychologically into what you do because you want to help people and you want to do the right thing I think we all remember being of more or less the same age give or take uh you know many years ago the the whole um I can’t ever think quickly enough when I’m doing these uh there was that huge drama about doctors working for 60 70 hours shifts and uh you know there was a huge thing about it in in the media uh that doesn’t seem that long ago but I know it was some time ago things uh if you can immediately pinpoint some of the darkest times in in your career when would you say that would be um well I mean it’s I I think it’s fairly obvious to everyone really that covered was probably the darkest time that I’ve ever seen um but it is interesting because um I showed you a picture didn’t I of the only picture that I’ve got of me in a hat and a uniform was when I was a student nurse and trying to throw it up now we can throw it up while you’re while you’re finding that let me just read a couple of long conversations along comments here um Dawn O’Connor’s with this higher Dawn um she will definitely relate to a lot of this um Andrew is saying so many people that would be amazed would be amazing nurses or health professionals don’t go into the profession due to it being too academic now it’s the worst thing they ever did and then Diana capilaire says hi guys I think I’m much undervalued profession and within a broken system however I thank you all for your hard work care and dedication thank you Diana nice to have you with us I hope everything’s going great uh we’ll talk soon um okay so tell us about this sorry can I just come back on that bit about um about it’s too academic now absolutely and they finally recognize that so we now have got the Registered Nursing associate um and we’re going to have about 30 trained over the next three years who are the equivalent of what used to be the state enrolled nurse so we’d have the state registered nurse which was a three-year training and then we’d have the state enrolled nurse which was um a two-year training and and it’s and it’s not the same and I’m not allowed to say it’s the same but actually it’s it’s similar in that there’s still an academic um component to it but it’s not as re it’s not maybe as rigorous or or the same as as a degree so it’s more a diploma level so at least at least we’ve got that now um but that’s going to take a little while to come through so yeah but I’m you see the lady in the long dark coat in the middle of the picture literally just on the just on your shoulder yeah I’m the nurse with um next to her in the white dress um with the hat um and the really bad hairstyle The Fringe to be fair they’re all identical the 80s Fringe that’s me in the middle there and that’s the only picture I’ve got of me with a hat on um so so yeah that’s cut slides and we we said that’s around about 1985 1986. so look at look at the banners you know we’re running out of patience uh wall closures Cuts don’t heal help us to help you and and I’ve just balloted I’ve just sent my ballot paper off from the RCN which is Royal College of Nursing um are asking us to strike basically that’s what they’re recommending um and uh yeah so it’s like it’s gone full circle so but those times weren’t dark and the reason those times weren’t dark was because we laughed we had the darkest sense of humor probably not politically correct um but it got it got us through and we had such fun we were allowed to laugh but we weren’t as exhausted as we aren’t well I the diff the difference is is that is that I remember being a second year not a third year student nurse doing nights on a on a medical ward 28 beds um and there was me and a healthcare assistant and we had the registered nurse was over the corridor and but the difference was was that it was a Nightingale Award so by that it means you could see everybody so you’d sit at the top of the award you could see everybody so no one fell no one fell because they were restrained in a loving way so I used to get these chairs and people be put in these chairs and they’d be tipped back in the chair and they could tip them forward for them to eat um so so no one fell like they’re all falling you know patients fall now so it was a whole different world and you could manage on this staff because you didn’t have individual Bays whereas now we we have we have um set Staffing numbers it’s not mandatory and why else it’s mandatory but it’s not mandatory at the moment so it’s not in law that we have to have a set amount of staff so we’re we’re constantly battling for the for for the right numbers of staff and for me it’s about recruiting people into the profession so we’ve we’ve looked at our trust at the levers so who’s leaving out the profession and there are a lot of experienced near retirement because don’t forget everyone wants to be a nurse in the 80s so they’re all coming up retirement age now and they’re all retiring and covid pushed them over the edge and they’re going but but we so in our in our particular trust it’s the retires the retirees that are going and all that experience that goes with it leaving a very inexperienced Workforce but I’ve just read um a report in the nursing times two days ago where the king’s fund who are a big academic body they’ve done some research and it’s actually the under 45s that are leaving nursing so they’re going into nursing they can’t it’s too much and they’re leaving so for me the only way that we’re going to make this profession attractive going forward and in the future is is if we have um real support for Generation Zed um young people because there’s the Millennials and now there’s the generation Zed and they need more support and and also they they they know they can expect more and they also don’t just go into one professional one job and stay in it they’re going to a job and they’re then they’ll do that part-time and then they get another part-time job and then they’re that they’re more Mobile in their in their in their their work working in their approach in their approach to life so my brother so they’ve got multiple income streams so that’s a phrase that we’ve heard like recently so so that seems to be more attractive and especially with the world of technology you can do it sitting in your front room you know so why would they want to go and do go through the rigors of being a nurse the hands on the Hands-On approach we need motivational people who can really attract you know going to primary schools and talk about being a nurse get some really good good programs on the Telly that actually portray nursing in a positive way um you know but more importantly when people get onto the wards um they need support and by that we need to educator roles so not just managers senior nurses running award we need senior nurses supporting the junior staff to stay and look after them I’ve um I’ve had experience in hospitals recently with close family members uh my brother actually works um for the for the NHS or for a trust um you know I can’t tell you exactly what he does anyway the conversations that we have had in the past was he was telling me that you don’t get the uh or there hasn’t been the care associated with that um that was there in the past because there’s a lot of agency work and the people that come in for a day or two they don’t have that personal close um relationship with their patients and and you can see that by the way that the care is is given to patients and he he was saying that that’s a major problem right now is that across the board um so there was a big government drive and we got we got direction from NHS England it was a few years back it was before covid that you’ve got to stop using agency nurses really so you have to stop because you know we I I could go in and probably twice as much as what I earn now in consultancy or in you know it and what’s really interesting is is that agency nurses are prepared to travel the country so so they will you know they will work um uh they will live in London and that they’ll travel down here stay for the weekend and we provide the accommodation for that as well um and in and in our medical colleagues as well so um so yes I I think that’s an issue but I also think that um who can blame them really if what we’re offering in the NHS is not comparable so who can blame them and also what happens is is that if it’s a nice place to work which I believe I’ll Trust to be um they stay so they’re like long-term agency workers so they’re part of the workforce actually quite a lot especially they’re on a much higher salary than the regular workers so that causes a lot of unrest sorry I’m talking Abby that must cause a lot of unrest within the troops so to speak to know that everyone knows that they’ve got the option to do that as well Some people prefer to work in the NHS and the reason for that is we’ve got good terms and conditions compared to other private providers so you know we get we get a decent pension if we stay in the NHS we get a decent pension there’s also something about the quality of the work that the NHS provides it’s Second To None you know really um in terms of um you know look what happened with covids I I can’t believe the mobile you know yeah we got things wrong of course we did but but the mobilization of that whole vaccination um managing demands um and and now the added um uh work burden of actually trying to catch up for patients so that they get all of the backlog that we’re dealing with as well plus all of the unplanned admissions that are coming through the front door because they haven’t been able to get a face-to-face Primary Care GP appointment the demand is is beyond beyond huge now for for the whole of the Health and Care system so it’s also our Care Home colleagues um you know uh domiciliary visits um by carers you know everyone is it’s Log Jam the whole thing is backlogged and log jammed and we’re almost coming to a point now in the hospitals where it’s one in one hour well it is that is like that so so we’re constantly managing this risk so far there’s something about working in the NHS when it comes to research so if you work in a university hospital you know you’re going to be involved in in Dynamic working and and you know research as well so it’s always been attracted attracted attractive to work in the NHS if you’re a healthcare professional I think that I think the scales are beginning to tip a bit now well there’s lots of comments um I’m not sure if you still have your computer open and you can read these it’s difficult while you’re working as well Andrew says who wants to pay to go to UNI whilst working 37 and a half hours a week which is what a Nursing degree is come out in debt and with a starting wage far less than your friends live in you and you have attended 10 hours of lectures a week I mean they can get a bursary to pay for the University fees but but it’s the it’s the wage that is is missing yeah Bobby says it’s quite scary to think where the NHS will end up it’s being pushed to the limits and people are suffering for this it’s not the hard-working stuffer it’s a blame but the government needs to pull its fingers out Dawn O’Connor at NHS is sadly broken and not a very attractive place to work now um yesterday there were 15 ambulances at the emergency department waiting to offload patients she’s never known it that bad now they drop them at the front door now it’s immediate Handover so so they come because they have to get out to patients that having heart attacks and you know really emergencies and and so therefore that puts additional pressure on the emergency department because it literally is fall to the brim um I saw a Facebook post from somebody um today who who said it was like it was like a war zone and it is like a war zone and we have to start streaming patients as though it’s though it were a war zone it’s terribly sad who who’s important enough to treat immediately and who gets so all the horror stories um of people being sat waiting in Wards on beds for hours hours on end you know it’s uh somebody mentioned about iron You know despite all of that because otherwise we’re fighting a vicious circle we we’ve got to rise above it you know some in some way but it we can’t do it as individuals alone so there are plenty of inspirational people still who you know want to attract people back into the profession because we care about it but but we can’t do that alone so unless they’re going to mandate that you must have set numbers to start you know nurses on a wall to look after patients and don’t forget District nursing as well I mean that you know I won’t even go into because we’re an integrated trust so we run District nurses services in East Sussex as well um but you know we’ve got we’ve got to do something but we can’t do it alone it has to be the government have to have to prioritize it as well and but do you know what interestingly on our way back to the airport me and Rick had a really good conversation with the taxi driver is it was a lady taxi driver and when we were describing the NHS to her and how we have patients who come from abroad to get treatment because I know that happens we try and get the money back from them um but it is that isn’t always successful when I was describing the NHS to you know completely objectively it sounded completely mad why would we do work the way that we do we’re not in 1948 anymore and I can really see us move into a more privatized system I mean it’s already privatized it is in certain areas it’s already prioritized well for someone like myself bananas the way I was describing this utopic system where you get everything for free so tell me then tell me my ignorance the um what privatization looks like and what it means is it a good thing is it a bad thing that might be a ridiculous question to ask but it’s just a question I’m asking anyway no no not at all so um so when I say it’s be it’s been privatized so you’ll pay in England you’ll pay money for your uh Dentistry so okay yeah it’s subsidized but that used to be free um and in Scotland it is you you pay you don’t pay for your prescriptions but in England we do and they’re going up every every five minutes so um GP surgeries they are I know of GP surgeries that have been bought up so as a group by American organizations um I’m not going to name any names but but they’re run by American companies um what else probably my colleagues can help me more because private work I mean we do Outsource private work as well so a lot of that started in the pandemic you know we so basically the NHS the na the NHS becoming privatized would mean that you would have to have personal um insurance plans personal life care before you get looked at everything gets paid for so so what’s happening now is that we pay our National Insurance um they could put that up a penny or you know pounds or whatever and everyone would probably pay it so that would have that would put billions into the back into it but for some reason they don’t do that um but what will happen by default is that there will no longer be an NHS so so if you if you can afford a private medical insurance plan why would you not do that now even though you know you can get free at the point of contact care from the NHS if it’s for a planned a planned procedure like a knee replacement why why would you wait for two years in agony when you can afford a private medical plan so I I don’t need a knee replacement at the moment I might do in a couple of years time so I’ve actually joined benenden which is it’s not quite a private medical insurance um organization but it they they do you can get fast tracked on it and of course don’t forget these are all the same doctors that are doing the private work and the NHS work so so what will happen is I think that that it will become privatized by default so all that can afford it will go to go to private medical insurance they’ll still get their emergency care but what worries me is all of those that are left behind that can’t afford medical insurance they still require a service they still require looking after but it was quite incredible how well you’ve just you’ve just kind of you’ve just kind of contradict not contradicted yourself but you said before no no you said before that it sounds ludicrous to explain the NHS to somebody and yet at the same time you you’re you’re you’re saying that that is what the NHS provides to people uh but why should why should it be provided to people or maybe I’m misunderstanding the way that you sign it because it is an archaic an archaic model of providing that I believe it probably is now I believe it probably is but but it’s revered around the world so so if we’re gonna keep that name of the NHS then yes it needs to have a massive injection of resource but I don’t think that’s coming anytime soon certainly not from our current government so so therefore what will happen I think is that those that can afford it’s that poverty Rich Gap will will expand so although there’ll be an NHS it won’t run in the same way as it should so do people know the is there a solution that’s glaringly obvious glaringly obvious to people that the government aren’t putting into place or is it the fact that nobody really knows how to get out of this this [ __ ] storm as many people call it I mean I mean when you think back to 1940 28 when it was first put in place we we’ve got an Ever aging population so people are living longer Technologies are being developed that cost more money so so the Demand versus the supply just isn’t isn’t right nowadays whereas in 1948 when it was first put into place it was so the solution I don’t I I I’ve got ideas for nursing as to what I think the solution might be and I’ve sort of alluded to them a little bit but it’s it’s a bit idealistic to think that people would want to come into nursing but we are hemorrhaging nurses and if we don’t do something fast we’re who’s going to look after us in our old age you know so it is a concern it really and when I say nursing Dawn you know I mean Midway free uh Dawn actually just says my friend works as a healthcare assistant for an agency Insurance twice as much as as Dawn as a senior Midwife and then uh Lynn Henson says the absolute lack of investment has driven us towards feeling a more privatized system would be better but look at what happens in the USA if you have cancer you are likely to go bankrupt trying not to die private insurance is all well and good but it soon stops paying out if you’re Contin if your condition continues or reaches a limit and then Diana says demand for narrix’s resources yeah so the taxi driver later that we were talking to it’s in Spain it’s even more and you’re probably about to tell me more than than the taxi driver but she was saying that if you live in Barcelona and you visit from ibatha and go to Barcelona and need health care you have to pay for it yeah you know it’s like it’s not it’s some some services are free but only for the people that live in Barcelona so so it’s almost like a postcode Lottery but literally it’s area to area um you know it’s not countries country so we know as people but the answer is we know of people who have uh been waiting for treatment back over in um in Britain and or in Ireland and weren’t able to get it and they they went someone I shared the information through the vocal booth family um after visiting Villa hayasa last year asked about local hospitals wedding had a procedure for a third of the a third of the cost in in an alicanteca hotel and he said that the healthcare uh was incredible so I’m looking at your face on the screen here whereas I should be looking in the eyes through the camera about that I am I am actually looking at you um so I’m it’s I’m sitting here thinking to myself it’s a bit of a crazy conversation for a DJ and a Clipper to have but it’s really it’s really interesting for me to to sit and listen to your story um you you are you’ve always been prayed and wore you know that badge with with honor um but yet no you say you know the whole system is in is in is in Dire Straits so to speak um I’m just reading another comment here Andrea says we don’t have doctors either many have taken retirement early in the last two years they’ve been in a in a dilemma for more than 10 years and it was never addressed [Music] banging on about it but um I I want to finish my nursing career doing what I went into nursing for in the first place going back to you know the beginning of the conversation and I want I want to care for people um in a way that I think will actually benefit them so as much as I’ve learned how to diagnose prescribe you know all of that stuff it I’m now exploring much more we were talking about you know podcasts and the things that you listen to and are really interesting so I’m much more being drawn into the um more holistic medicine uh you know working on leaky gut for those that don’t know what that is is you know what we eat is is so important um and I’m much more going down that road and thinking about doing Reiki therapy or something like that so that in my retirement I can work flexibly with you know a number of work of income streams but also also it will satisfy my um you know the the the fundamental reason why I became a nurse in the first place so um just saying what you what you were saying about clubbing I could talk about clubbing all day long but um disappointed as it was Confessions of a nurse no we can we can carry on there’s I I mean it’s you know generally I sometimes I get lost thinking that I’m talking to a thousand you know strangers and at the end of the day it’s just all us friends sat here enjoying the conversation like we would we would around the table so you know if if there’s anything that you want to discuss then that’s absolutely fine I’m just checking my um my questions here that I actually put some questions down uh we talked about the owner of being a nurse were you ever embarrassed of working for the NHS or never right now really because it doesn’t people people you still get the plaudits and the thanks um that still comes because don’t forget as well that my embarrassment yeah I’ll tell you what my embarrassment is is the fact that I’m not on the front line anymore um so when I was a nurse consultant um I had a great job because three days a week I was a nurse consultant so I did a lot of policy writings strategy developing educational I I taught um developed and taught a masters course at Canterbury Christchurch University worked for University at Brighton I was doing lots of that sort of stuff um but two days a week I was a community matron so I had a caseload and I saw patients and I was the happiest I’ve ever been and then my chief nurse at the time wanted me to be a nurse manager and the become assistant director of nursing and she decommissioned my nurse consultant role and gave me no choice but to go into this role so um and I’ve I’ve stayed in this role now for a long time um I got a succumbent to NHS England as deputy director of nursing for the southeast and I loved system work I loved working influencing over a wide area but it was only a second and then um NHS England merged with NHS Improvement and they froze all the jobs and I had to go back to my assistant director nursing role so I’ve been in this role for a long long time um and depending on your Chief nurse depends on how how they want you to run the role so my role is basically very desk driven and with covids came the invention of uh teams Microsoft teams and so it’s very easy for me to sit on teams from seven in the morning till seven at night um you know without a break and the embarrassment to answer your question came when covid all kicked off um I went back to my itu route so they didn’t want me to but I trained up I did all um uh I went and did Shadow shifts and um did some courses and things just to gem myself up and get get you know able to use all the electronic equipment that was very different but it was like riding a bicycle so I worked in itu for a little while during the pandemic but then I got asked to go and set up a field Hospital in Brighton um to come up with a nursing Workforce plan and the governance framework um for 350 budget hospital and then the military pulled that and then they sent me back and my manager said to me I need you working strategically managing uh managing the workforce because there were times where we had 28 patients that should have had four registered nurses and they had one and there was one day that I remember we had five areas with one nurse each for five 28 baby boards and we had opened up hospitals like literally we commandeered a nursing home opened up hospital to manage demand so you can imagine it was it was moving numbers to make Staffing safe and I I coordinated that because the the heads of nursing were crying they were all fighting infighting in their department and I had to say look we can do this and we can get through this and we can provide the evidence that we’ve done the best we can and we will do it but my embarrassment always still to this day is that I’m not out there helping them physically when you’ve got when you’ve got a full emergency department and there’s patients that that need feeding and watering that are waiting for a bed you know they need to go to the toilet where do you get the privacy and dignity in a corridor you know it and I should be down there helping with that stuff but I had to make that difficult decision about where can my skills be best utilized and and during the pandemic it was as a nurse leader as a nurse manager um well you def you definitely were uh there I’m reading some of these comments I hear that I hear that we’re getting a lot of uh comments here let me just read uh if I can try and scroll back up here if it will allow me to get yourself a drink if you need to um why isn’t this allowing me to read these comments Andrew stop pissing about um right let me try refreshing these comments because we’ve had quite a few different comments there um right here we go so I’ll scroll back up because I did see um where did I get to I remember when do you signed about what you did and being so impressed by that such a good job oh you can read the comments all right let me just this is ridiculous why can’t I read that maybe you can read them out for me because my comments screen has frozen someone commented I didn’t recognize the name um if you uh if you could read that for me um I can’t oh my God there’s 140 comments how people on the stream I can’t I can’t see it because if I try and open the technology it’s gonna say um so Jane Harrington said you should not feel embarrassed at all in capitals Stu Miller’s written it’s a slamming indictment of the upper management of the system that someone is carrying a lawyers and now feels some level of embarrassment working for the NHS um I we need these kinds of people to have the real influence and power and that’s what I felt I had a little bit of Stew when I worked for NHS England I felt that I was finally able to influence policy um but yeah it wasn’t to be uh we can see I can see now uh Kelly Kelly Savory was the name that I didn’t recognize thank you for commenting Kelly she says I’m a district nurse and the service is at a Breaking Point there is no staff management are expecting too much of the nurses with no capacity to manage patients it’s very worrying so that’s where I actually got up to um and then Diana was making her comment about we can care and dance we will start talking about dancing very soon uh and then Lynn was all for the more holistic approach um and then Wendy commented as you read out so Claire King I was Ward manager on the first covered Ward at Burton and the amount of deficit date was more than five very stressful so did you let’s let’s talk very briefly uh about the the you know the beginning of the covert situation it must have been very traumatic for you did you did you have long long time term did you suffer long term for what you saw and what you had to deal with um I think with me it came out physically so as everyone knows I think so I’ll just tell everyone everything um I’ve got psoriatic arthritis which is an autoimmune disease now which I am determined to reverse if I can find a way I’m going to do it uh naturally so but I think that that because I coat uh psychologically and mentally and emotionally so my personal resilience appeared strong I genuinely think it’s come out physically with me it has to come out somewhere online manager Lee Chaplin um and he’s had to have some cardiac procedures you can’t imagine what their job was like um in an acute hospital at the time um so it’s it’s really interesting because I I’ve blocked it all out it was like it happened yesterday everyone seems to have forgotten it now actually even though we’ve got I mean today we had today we have the best part of 70 positive patients with covid steel in our hospital two hospitals acute hospitals so but you know it’s it’s I it’s business as usual now but I wrote I had to write quite a long narrative to um uh uh predominantly a Facebook friend really who who I felt I had to justify some of the comments that you know when you didn’t want to get involved and get let Kofi come between you and friendships um I just felt compelled to write covid deniers yeah so um I I did write I wrote to him and I read this back just before I came on air and I I was really shocked about what I’d written actually um yeah I mean I could read it out but it’s it might be a bit boring but go for it go through it so so I’ll just pick out I’ll just pick out the relevant bits initially in March 2020 I worked in ICU after 30 years away from it then I spent a period of time along the coast I’ve told you all that bit blah blah blah um we had the initial peak in March but then from November to February we had a way far worse as we were hit with the Kemp variant so we were in Hastings and then they came there was a camp variant that just swept through us along the coast um as stated before I’m not going into the detail of what all of my colleagues at all levels and our Support Services went through which included Rick my four children and two daughter-in-laws who all work at one of the hospitals and we all we all did ships in and out the door day and night it was bizarre um suffice to say that 12 to 14 hour day’s nights on average six days a week as usual as high as the peak of admissions on The Daily published graph so we had this graph doing this was the same amount of absent staff suffering from covids self-isolation carers Etc manage manage an increased activity with half the number of nurses was a near impossibility we lost members of Staff dying who died and we still have staff opposite with the effects of long covered and psychological trauma and we’re not going to the details of which have been well documented and reported in the media the public cannot possibly understand what it’s like to live through what the NHS have and so my belief is that they have become completely desensitized to the images of Staff working on the front line and in some cases thinks it’s a think it’s a setup it is not um I can only speak from my own perspective of course but I have not witnessed any restrictions or massive impositions that have been unwarrated or unnecessary we have been in a war where we have lost over 3 million people worldwide and yes as in all war there will always be casualties yeah it is possible that we will lose the same amount through mental health deterioration domestic abuse of which I’m only too aware of in my work um if not more but if those restrictions have not been in place then we would have lost far more to covid there was a distinct and tangible increase in Hospital admissions which correlated with the lift of lockdown towards the end of summer so when the camp variant hit and cases of the South African variant were present in the UK then I don’t see what other course of action there was to take with regards to this being a proportional response what would you have done differently just stand back and watch people die as it is occurring now in India because that did happen didn’t it what do you think is happening what happened to the mental health of the surviving population given what they’re witnessing now we have many Indian nurses working in our trust and the tales of their relative suffering is unimaginable um I yeah I think that’s enough the problem is people as you say becoming desensitized to it and you know uh I have friends who will fall into the category so I’m not being disrespectful to them but everyone’s too too quick to throw down their own expertise on something that they really know absolutely nothing about and uh throw up their ideas of what should be done and you know why are we having a vaccine that it doesn’t stop you getting this and what’s the point but everyone’s dropping down dead of heart attack and then people jump up saying yeah we told you we were correct and really you know who are we to have these kind of comments it’s it’s crazy but as you say you do have to step back sometimes and and and and and not allow allow it to come between friendship because people do have different uh opinions um sometimes I’ve made friends with all the people well I just don’t I don’t get involved because I can’t um so there’s there’s a we’ve got a code of conductors nurses that we can’t you know voice our political views um so I’m very very cautious about what what I do put online but um you know I I’m I’m also not a disbeliever in conspiracy either you know so I’m not Daft enough to think that you know um you know we don’t know how it started in the first place um but when you get when you get people sort of campaigning outside George’s tooting as people are coming off after a 12-hour shift you know all I can say is it was real it was real for us that we’re working it um and I and I also having worked at NHS England level I also know how the vaccination Pro progress would have been rolled out um no one would have done that so like the professor witters and everything they would not have done that through Manis so those people that were and the figures that were being published I know would have been accurate because we could feel it on the ground floor so we on the ground so we knew we knew that those Figures were accurate and I I no one did did what they did through covids out of malice they did it because they had to do something you know and as you said mistakes were made in hindsight you have the opportunity to to look again and make better better calculated judgments once you know what the outcome is but you know uh I think everyone it always sticks in people’s minds when they look at the figures and say well there’s no coincidence that this guy’s his mate and he made X billions of pounds do you buy into that any of that oh yeah completely um like I’m I’m talking about sort of NHS England’s Regional level or whatever government might might you know yeah of course they made billions out of it I I have absolutely no doubt out they they could have managed it better they could have made quicker decisions they could have listened to the scientists they could have maybe prevented deaths but they made them they made a big deal out of it they made a lot of money yeah all right yeah right okay so from the darkness of the covid yeah what is it that you wanted what is it that you want to discuss surrounding clubbing and being able to talk for days about your passion for music yourself and Rick yeah um I I just think I for me it’s just I mean if this will be the same for a lot of people and it’ll resonate with a lot of people it’s been my constant through good times and bad I remember the moment when I when I first heard my music so I was babysitting I think I must have been 13 14 something like that I had a little transistor radio a tiny little you know with a little aerial um I lived in Hastings and I was bored stiff my sister who’s six years younger she was in bed and it was New Year’s Eve and I’m and I’m I’m at this age where I’m like I’m wanting to go out um and I sat listening I was tuning in and I managed to pick up this sound and it was sold basically it was some soul record can’t even remember what it was now but I just thought what is this and then I found out it was Invicta radio and the person the DJ that was playing music was Pete Tom and it was that moment I remember that moment really distinctly where I thought I’ve got to listen to this radio station all the time I’ve got to listen to this show I’ve got to find out who this DJ is and it started from there and it’s never left me so whatever Darkness has been happened in my life I’ll always go to music and sometimes I and I love old stuff I love all all genres of dance music you know Soul music jazz music disco whatever it is I love it all um even hip-hop we were listening to me and my son were listening to uh the daytime sessions at vocal booth and my son came in and went do you know who this is playing like it’s such and such from 1980 whatever you know because he’s all into his hip-hop so um yeah it’s it’s always been a constant for me and um and it’s always been my comfort but sometimes I get so I listen to new music as well and I buy new music but sometimes it starts to irritate me so it depends on what sort of mood I’m in like if you know sometimes I’ll get really irritated with listening to new music and I think I can’t be bothered to listen to that I’m too overloaded with everything else but then it will I’ll always go back to it and it will always be my consistency my comfort my love and and going out dancing to it um kills all eels really it’s really funny I felt my joints all went down during vocal booth bizarre either the hot weather or just the fact that I was feeding my soul mm-hmm therapy indeed as as actually you’ve just said that um Diana says music is food for our souls and Katrina says take her to the dance floor wonderful so from from clubbing you’ve met a great group of people um outside of vocal booth and of course an event that we run uh vocal booth Weekender uh we have a we have a really good Community weekly weekends as well on the radio where we have you know everyone’s chatting a lot of the people here will be aware of that um and it’s it’s just about everything in life really coming back to what you were saying at the very beginning you having that desire that passion to to having um a calling to want to help people as you as you are um moving on in life now you want to continue to do that and you’ve got desires to um continue along the music now I don’t know if you said this ingest or you were being serious you you’re gonna think about getting some equipment and start playing music you know what I I was probably very drunk when I said that but actually I I don’t know whether whether it would take the joy out of it or whether it would add to the joy and I would be a bedroom DJ I mean I wouldn’t be you know it’s going to come and watch me play or whatever but um yeah I’d like to have a dabble I’d like to have a go I mean I commit we’ve got behind me we’ve got um 12 tens and our techniques and we’ve got loads of vinyl not as much as you um so I commit I could make some mixed two records together um are we going to start with are we going to start with Clash of the Titans next year do you know what in for Penny in for pounds there you go so we we have our first Titan contestantly the music only I can tell you exactly well that’s the way it’s going now so that’s that’s good to hear and uh so what I started off was was saying that we surround ourselves with very um influential inspirational motivational people pure Positive Vibes because you know that’s all there really is that you you need to surround yourself with being with a lifelong partner now um Life’s Too Short isn’t it really to to deal with anything less than just pure positivity it is and and I I think we overthink things too much I was you know I Nick’s been just incredible in my life because I was a ball Maria I was in a really bad place really when I met him um and he was so laid back you know just so low fat people love this chair and nothing phased him and he saw the positive in absolutely everybody and everything so I think we’ve sort of balanced ourselves out a little bit over over the years but um you know he he’s he was my inspiration and my rock and you know I just I I just wake up and I it’s all of it um there’s a lot of there’s and and I absolutely think it’s the right time there are lots of life coaches at the moment there are lots of people trying to lots of memes on Facebook trying to and I can imagine being in a dark place and and your mental health being affected at the moment and actually you it’s a bit of that desensitization thing I think you get you get to that point where you do get a bit desensitized sometimes I’m I find myself sometimes flicking through a little bit when I don’t want to want to flick through I want to read it properly and digest it and take it in but they’re they’re and you you can’t just tell people just be positive you know it just it’s not that simple for a lot of people to suffer with mental health and I I grew up with it and I know it very very well and it’s not it’s not that simple to just be positive but I think if you if you are in that state of mind and you are in that frame where you can see the good in every day and you can do that sort of affirmation thing and be grateful for what you’ve got I mean I genuinely um it’s interesting what I don’t know whether you wrote it or said it but about never go to bed on a bad word you know it’s a bit the other way for me we wake up in the morning we look at each other and we go we’re still here we’re still alive nothing’s nothing’s gone wrong you know so um that’s how we start our day but um it’s I think if if you if if there are people around that are in an in that space and can can try and inspire people and be cheerful and be loving towards one another then that’s all we can do is try and make the environment around us for people better you know and that’s that’s what and that’s why I think the other consistency in my life associated with music has been the message boards ever since um I’ve had a computer I’ve been talking to people and you know you you can say oh yeah they’re not really friends you know they’re um they’re just virtual people you don’t even speak to them on a dance floor you’re always drunk or whatever you know you can look at it that way but actually over time you do develop that friendship and I I genuinely treat my my my online buddies as friends now you know we had a great revolve um chat in on pressure radio um the other night because they’re all the people that were on the chat were the old Southport message boards you were missed at that point and but yeah you know I think it’s important to try and Spread spread a bit of cheer while you can indeed definitely well you know that’s what I’m all about you know I will always do that I I have a wake up go to the gym come back in this complete euphoric state of just wanting to just tell everyone you can change your life I’ve got my friend over at the moment Gary he’s um Dave just bought a holiday home in Spain and I’m just over the moon for him that you know knowing that we’ve been able to Inspire him it’s all his his own hard work of course that he’s been able to do it but him and his wife and his children uh they’ve got the place they can come over we’re in the gym and he’s just if you can have that energy around you of positivity and try and share that with people why wouldn’t you want to do it you know and and so that’s why we have a great Community here um who watch My Stream who listen to pressure radio uh you know you you we’re going to be uh enjoying Mark Wilkinson’s book club tomorrow evening more positive people there’s and and it doesn’t have to be with uh an ulterior motive it doesn’t have to be because I think you’re maybe like myself it’s not necessarily money driven you’re not focusing on chasing that big money it’s it’s just everything that comes with it am I right in assuming that yeah um I and it’s so yeah so so what the NHS has done for me it’s given me a lot I’ve given it a lot and it’s given me a lot and nursing has given me a lot as well and I know although I feel I felt really despondent recently as I think you know most people working in the NHS do but I think if you’re a nurse and a practitioner you you’ve got to remember the you you you’ve met and influenced so many people in your career and I know you said 30 years it’s 40 years next year for me so you’ve influenced so many people patients and staff that that they remember you so you know spreading that and and so I’ve never done it for the money I but what’s happened is that I’ve ended up with an okay pension because I I started it very late my pension um and we’ll be all right you know we we and it’s never it’s never about the money for me and I think that that’s why Mark’s um book club is really interesting because it’s almost like you you get into that mindset of feeling guilty that you you think you need more money if you’ve just got enough um because what’s important is your health at the end of the day what’s important is your health but actually even even with good health or if you’re unfortunate enough to have ill health every day counts and there’s no getting away from it if you’ve got income and you’ve got money those days are going to be a ball aren’t they you’re going to have them you’re gonna have a whale of a time you know we’ve always said if we win the lottery the first thing that me and Rick are going to do is rebuild the bathing pool in Saint Leonards it was an open-air salt water like a leader um and that shot years ago and we want to open that up so the kids can enjoy it you know that you can do so much with money so there’s no getting away from it so yeah I’d love to have money I’d love to have more money but yeah the the focus for me is is being happy every day well we end we end up on a on a strong a strong plug for Mark Wilkinson’s book club check go and check it out we’ll be there tomorrow we’ll be both we’ll be both there tomorrow uh so listen we’ve been talking happily talking away after the the initial 10 minutes of of technical nonsense uh so many incredible comments that you can see yourself I’m fairly certain um people you’ve met because of vocal booth people you’ve met because of other events and whatnot I want to say thank you to all of those guys for being here um and everyone is saying yes a resounding yes to you joining Clash of the Titans next year that’s that’s confirmed that’s happening you know um I need your help so there you go so uh I think um we’ve kind of covered everything that we were going to cover to you yes I I just thank you thank you for the opportunity because and I want to thank Stu as well because if you haven’t nominated me I wouldn’t have nominated myself because I don’t think that what I do is necessarily interesting or my life is necessarily interesting but um you know I I haven’t told you half the stories of nursing that I had lined up um you know the fact of humorous and funny ones but yeah maybe maybe I’ll get my daughter who is a professional writer she needs to write me and Rick’s Memoirs because we’ve got stories for days well I was going to say if you if you keep um talking to Mark he might even talk you into writing a book you know so who knows yeah absolutely I know you’re going to do parenting soon um or you know people that single parents but yeah I mean me and Rick have always said we just need a camera in the kitchen what an eye opener what what um uh a sitcom that would be bless this house they’re not they’re not so good life or the even better life you know right listen I will leave you to your evening I’ll say a few goodbyes to everyone thank you so much for your time and you say your story wasn’t very interesting the whole point why I do these things is is just chatting to friends and and getting them to share their stories because you have had an incredible career you’ve lived an incredible life you’ve still got a long way to go as well and it’s nice to be able to document that now uh and and heaps and praise upon you and and let everyone uh show their love and appreciation for you so I I give you a round of applause and everyone thank you for staying there right I’m going to say goodbye to everyone I’m sure I’m going to break something now thank you my love okay take care bye okay well we did get there we did get there in the end thank you for your patience everybody um so many comments so many video likes so many shares um very briefly if you give me two minutes of your time I’ll start wrapping up as you can see uh new graphics I’ve been messing around with new camera angles uh this week I had a little bit of an extra push trying to get some more access subscribers you will have received emails if you’re an existing subscriber uh you would have seen me post something just yesterday uh explaining what it is because still people message me and they’re not really sure what I’m trying to do so I’ll put uh like a um a bit of a long post on and a few people reached out so now we’re actually up to 85 people out of the um required I say required desired 100 subscribers um that will help us achieve so many things and uh so thank you you can see all of the logos here when the stream finishes now every every week all of your names will be on a roll call you’ll see the new angle the camera up here looking into the studio um you’ll get to see the new setup with all these lights and thank you if you are an access member if you happen to come across this video for the first time uh while we’ve been discussing uh Angela’s journey in the NHS then uh do check out some more videos there’s a whole heap of fantastic conversations I’ve been having with some of the UK’s leading DJs and producers and I’ve also been having other um live conversations talking about depression Health addiction and you can see here on the screen next Wednesday I’ve changed to Wednesday for some reason that escapes me now but next Wednesday I’ll be talking to two friends who were living a very happy life together with two beautiful children and then things changed and uh it got a little bit tricky and they’re more than happy to come on and discuss how they do a wonderful job together now um co-parenting their two wonderful children uh bringing up children together apart that’s going to be next Wednesday let me see if I can go back and look at any of your comments uh no I’m not going to do that because I’ll just break something I’m sure thank you all for being here uh let me read your comments I can’t see them now uh everyone’s saying thank you Angela giving her lots of love and praise and they loved listening to the story that’s wonderful yes a huge round of applause for that young lady so I will say thank you very much for being here I’ll see you on Sunday uh for the radio show and all of these people that have liked and shared the video thank you very much it’s truly truly appreciated and uh I’m out of here I’m gonna see if this works uh stick around and see your name on the screen thank you guys one love foreign