Training day

So I was at a "training day" today.

The recession is only getting tougher here and we have not had a salary increase in 3 years, and have been promised 1% this year...

...a whole 1%...

...I've registered to do some work through a nursing agency, and despite having had to take copies of every single piece of my annual/current 'mandatory training' to the interview, I also had to attend their own in-house training  course....

The course was a microcosm of the NHS...

...12 female participants...2 locals, 3 Nigerians, 2 Zimbabweans,an Indian, a Czech and 3 Filipinos.

...4 male participants...1 local,1 Bulgarian, 1 Filipino and myself.

Everybody else on the course was already working for the agency...

...all of them had resigned from their NHS jobs and simply, in the main, had gone back to the same Units, but were now working through an agency.

There were all the usual stereotypes as well...

...the lady who was an hour late...who harangued the trainer to be admitted to the course,until he looked like he was going to stroke out...and who then didn't stop challenging him...and who refused to lie on the floor to participate in the resus training element...

...the lady who-, during a discussion on vulnerable adults-, complained about seeing teenagers kissing at the railway station this morning on her way to the course;and who informed us that such as act would cause the teenagers to be stoned where she is from...

...and of course the local lady on maternity leave who was,inevitably, married to a doctor and who knew everything about everything because she had recently qualified.

The trainer was talking about cross infection and hygiene and the need to wash your hands...

Yes...there was that doctor who got midwifery staff to wash their hands wasn't there...?

I don't know, said the trainer. What was his name?

I don't know...

"It was Semmelweis...Dr Semmelweis"

Are you sure...? I don't remember that name...!

"Jah....I'm sure..."

No one else had heard of him either.

*sigh*

Anyway...he got the nurses and doctors to wash their hands between seeing women in labour and he stopped them from getting Congo fever...

"Hummh....I think you'll find that he stopped them from getting puerperal fever....not Congo fever..."

I've never heard of that...'purple fever'...snigger...? Are you sure...?

"Well...you can probably get puerperal fever in the Congo...and you can probably get Congo fever if you're pregnant...particularly if you're actually in the Congo...but one is caused by ticks...and the other is caused by arrogance..."

Are you sure....cos...snigger... you seem quite arrogant...!

"Jah well...early in my career I had to choose between  honest arrogance and  hypocritical humility... I  choose  honest arrogance, and I've never been sorry."

At least the the coffee and biscuits were free.