A Career in Children and Young’s People Nursing.
Date 22 April 2024
We caught up with Bally to hear first-hand about her varied career in one of the more challenging areas of nursing - working with and for children and young people, as well as their families and carers - sometimes when the patient can be seriously ill. Bally also discusses how we prepare University of Northampton students to cope with sometimes challenging situations, but still provide good care, as well as some of the wider issues facing the nursing profession.
I ‘switched’ from Adult Nursing to Children and Young People’s Nursing some time ago. Back in those days, a Registered General Nurse could also work with children.
In 1995 I completed my Registered Sick Children’s Nurse training at Great Ormond Street Hospital but returned to Northampton General Hospital’s Children’s Department to work on a medical, surgical, high dependency ward as a Staff Nurse/Senior Staff Nurse. It was full-on and very busy, then in 2001 I had the opportunity to work in the community, which I wasn’t originally sure about, but I took the post of Cystic Fibrosis Specialist Nurse to manage the care for children and young people in Northampton. I absolutely loved it – it was so rewarding, having that real connection with families in their homes as well as the clinic and wards. For me this was holistic/joined up nursing.
In 2008 I took a secondment to dip my toe into management as Matron for Children’s Services at Northampton General Hospital. Again, it was a really rewarding job, but I underestimated the difficult decisions I’d have to make around recruitment, managing budgets (numbers have never been my strong point!), performance management of staff, and day to day quality checks and assurance. A large part of my job also included being on call for the wider hospital, and investigating incidents and complaints, etc. This was probably my most exhausting job and I when I had my daughter, I soon realised that I couldn’t manage both as a single parent. In 2015 an opening arose at the University of Northampton for a Senior Lecturer in Children’s Nursing and so I joined the team.
What a lot of people don’t understand is how exhausting, as well as rewarding, being a Children and Young People’s Nurse can be. Not just the physical side of things, but emotionally and mentally, as it can be very fast paced when you’re looking after the whole family as well as the child or young person, and working proactively as a team to give the best care at all times.
There is also the ‘grey area’ of young people of 16-18 years of age which requires you to consider the best decision for this age group, but which may go against their parents, so how much do you say to the parents, how much do you say to the young person, what about confidentiality, privacy, and being morally or ethically correct?
With younger children their bodies are still developing, how do they explain what is wrong if they are not able to understand the early symptoms of being unwell? As a children’s nurse, you develop the expertise to determine what is wrong by the clues and the evidence in front of you.
And mostly, you need to work quickly! Adults give you more time, they can tell you if they are taking a turn for the worse. With children, that’s not always an option. They can go downhill really quickly.
To hear from Bally herself about her career and what our Children and Young People’s Nursing degree offers students, listen to her podcast: http://pod.fo/e/22189b
Listen to podcast
Senior Lecturer in Children and Young People’s Nursing, Bally Sandhu, holds dual nursing qualifications - she is a Registered Adult Nurse and Registered Sick Children’s Nurse. She has worked at the University of Northampton since 2015.