By day Rachel Gagliardi is an emergency nurse at Nelson Hospital, by night she swaps uniform to support the St John service as a volunteer for their Major Incident Support Team (MIST). Here’s what she gets up to.
5.45am - Bbbbeeepppp! Bbbbeeepppp! I’ve gotten pretty good at turning my alarm off within seconds so that it doesn’t wake up Charlotte, 18 months, or my husband, Kris. I sneak out of bed and into the shower. After much-needed coffee, I jump in the car and head for work.
6.50am - Parked up outside the hospital, I take a deep breath, pop my mask on (the new COVID uniform) and head for the doors of Nelson Emergency department, my third shift this week.
7.00am - Nursing handover time. I’m given a list of patients left in the department from overnight and assigned to care for two of them. Thankfully it’s short. Although I know that won’t last long, the department will be pumping by 9am. We have a brief chat and prepare a game plan for the shift.
12.00pm - Chest pains, Covid, broken bones, abdominal pains and a trauma call, the morning has been busy! The reason I became an emergency nurse is no day is ever the same. It’s break time, 30 minutes to scoff some food (if I’m lucky) and have a breather, then back on the floor.
3.15pm - Phew! The shift went fast. I hand over to my fellow afternoon nurses, get out of my scrubs and head out the door to pick up Charlotte from Hardykids.
5.00pm - The evening routine of chaos begins as I throw together a somewhat healthy dinner for Charlotte, pop her in the bath and chase her around the lounge to get PJs on. I manage to somehow whip into my MIST uniform while having a toddler cling to my legs begging for me to play.
6.45pm - Kris is finally home! I demo some pre-prepared dinner down, kiss Charlotte goodnight and grab my bag, heading out the door towards Nelson for our monthly MIST training.
7.00pm - I arrive at Nelson station. After a quick hello and chat, we crack into the back of our beastly old ambulance, turned MIST vehicle. We start checking equipment/replacing expired drugs, and adding new equipment. Tonight, we are practising putting up the major incident tent. During a major event or incident, it’s our job to ensure that this tent is put up quickly and safely, so practice makes perfect.
7.30pm - It’s a large and heavy tent that takes four of us to get it up. A few adjustments of position, some hysterical laughing, and humorous jabs at each other, because we all forgot which way the valves go to blow the tent up (oops, that’s why we practice!). We check for leaks and look over the general condition to ensure it’s ready for action. Looks good! Time to put it down.
8.00pm - After brute strength contributed by all, the tent is rolled up and hauled back into the MIST truck. Time to head inside for some discussions. Tonight’s agenda is new recruitment and training. We have lined up nine new recruits for our team which is a huge expansion for our team of six and brings new challenges and excitement. We discuss rolling out multiple nights of training for our new recruits including a CPR scenario, tent and equipment familiarisation and general induction. We wrap up our meeting with setting some training dates for the rest of the month, then head home.
10.00pm - After a chat on the couch with my hubby, I’m off to bed with my phone to catch up on the day’s news and social events, then set my alarm ready for another day and drift off to sleep wondering if tonight’s the night the MIST pager will go off…
