This blog isn’t intended to teach anyone how to actually be anything.

My aim is to help nurses in all critical areas with simple practice points learned from years of making mistakes and learning from the mistakes of others…

Feel free to contact me to add your own tips and to correct old practices. Or help me remove dogma. Most ideas are universal, some are site specific, all are easy to remember and not many are in the textbook (but are based on practice/research).

Most of the tips I’ll put on here aren’t referenced, but I will include them where I can.

The idea for this blog came about a decade ago, when an anaesthetic nurse colleague went away on leave. I joked with her that if I went on leave I would need re-training when I came back. (My work/life balance wasn’t too good back then).

She suggested that I ring her and leave important things to remember on her answering machine so she could have a head start on re-learning when she returned. She had an odd/funny answering machine message (which I really wasn’t expecting) so instead of reminding her about maintaining cricoid pressure during intubation until asked to remove it, my message simply said “remember, McGill forceps are supposed to be bent”.

And so it began…I’ve been summarising relevant points of practice ever since.

And now they have a home…