Consider this my palate cleanser. The last few articles in this series have covered visa paperwork, NMC registration timelines, and the psychological architecture of long-term homesickness. Worthy topics, all of them, but not exactly a laugh a minute. So today I am offering you something different: a full and undefended account of the ten most embarrassing things I did in my first year as a Kiwi nurse in London. These are real. They happened. Several of them were witnessed by senior colleagues who I have to see every single day. You are welcome.
1. The Clinical Waste Bin Incident (The One in the Title, So Let’s Get It Out of the Way)
It was my second week. I was tired, I was moving fast, and there were – I want to be clear about this – at least four different bins in that sluice room. Yellow, black, tiger-stripe, and one that I now know is for offensive or hygiene waste, which has a very specific definition that I was not yet across. Reader, I used the wrong one. I used it with confidence, too, which somehow made it worse. The healthcare assistant who witnessed it did not say anything immediately. She waited until I had finished, nodded slowly in the way that only very experienced NHS staff can nod, and said: “You’ll want to have a look at the waste segregation policy, love.” I read the entire policy that evening. All fourteen pages of it. I have never touched the wrong bin since.
2. Calling a Consultant “Mate”
I want to contextualise this. In New Zealand, calling a consultant “mate” is not unusual. Medicine in New Zealand has a relatively flat hierarchy, at least in the settings I had worked in, and I had consultants at home who would have been mildly offended if you had not called them by their first name. I was not prepared for the particular quality of silence that followed when I called Dr Whoever-He-Was “mate” during a ward round at approximately nine o’clock on a Tuesday morning. The silence lasted perhaps two seconds. It felt like considerably longer. He recovered graciously. I have not made that particular error again, though I will confess it was not entirely obvious to me, in that moment, what I had actually done wrong.
3. The Biscuit Tin Misunderstanding
There is a tin in the nurses’ station. There is almost always a tin in the nurses’ station. In New Zealand, a tin in the nurses’ station means: please help yourself, someone brought these in, they are communal, take as many as you reasonably need. I helped myself. Generously. On three separate occasions over about a week and a half before someone gently mentioned that the tin belonged to a specific colleague and was, in fact, her personal lunch supply. To her enormous credit, she found this funny. Eventually.
4. Asking Where the “Dairy” Was
I was looking for somewhere to buy milk. In New Zealand, you go to the dairy. This is what corner shops are called. It is not a term that exists in British English in this context, and the look on my colleague’s face when I asked if she knew where the nearest dairy was suggested that she had briefly formed the impression I was asking about something considerably more agricultural. “Do you mean a corner shop?” she said, carefully. Yes. I meant a corner shop. I mean a corner shop every time.
5. Getting Completely, Catastrophically Lost on the Tube and Arriving Half an Hour Late for My First Shift
I had studied the Tube map. I had practised the route. I had even done a dry run the day before. What I had not accounted for was that the Circle line is not, in any meaningful sense, a circle, that “minor delays” on the District line means something quite different to what “minor delays” would mean on a New Zealand train – if, indeed, New Zealand trains experienced delays, which would require New Zealand to have trains – and that Earl’s Court station in the morning peak is the specific circle of hell reserved for people who have made questionable life choices. I arrived sweating, apologetic, and clutching an entirely useless Google Maps screenshot. My ward manager looked at me with an expression I would come to recognise as fond resignation. “You took the Circle line, didn’t you,” she said. It was not a question.
6. Referring to the Shift Handover as “Handover” With the Wrong Emphasis
This one is niche but I stand by its inclusion. On my ward in Christchurch we called it handover, with the emphasis on the first syllable. HANDover. My new London colleagues said HANDover too, but the rhythm was slightly different, and on my first handover I apparently said it in a way that caused three people to momentarily look up from their notes. I cannot fully reproduce the distinction in writing. Just know that there is one, and that I found it out the hard way.
7. Assuming “Pudding” Meant Pudding
I was invited to a colleague’s flat for dinner in about month two. A proper home-cooked dinner, which I was enormously excited about. She asked if I wanted pudding afterwards and I said yes, enthusiastically, already imagining something chocolatey. She brought out a cheese board. I must have looked visibly confused because she laughed and explained that “pudding” means dessert course in British English, encompassing everything from tiramisu to, apparently, cheese and crackers. I ate the cheese. It was excellent. I have since learned that “afters” is also acceptable and that the whole pudding-versus-dessert-versus-afters situation is a mild class minefield that the British themselves do not fully agree on, which honestly made me feel better about not having known.
8. Wearing the Wrong Colour Tunic on My First Week
Each NHS Trust has its own uniform policy, and each clinical role within a Trust is typically identified by a specific tunic colour. This is sensible and logical. It is also information that is contained in a staff handbook that I had been emailed before I started and had opened, scrolled through briefly, and closed. I turned up on day one in the wrong shade of blue – not dramatically wrong, but wrong enough that three patients asked if I was from a different ward, and a consultant asked if I was a physiotherapist. I was given the correct tunic by the end of the morning, but those first few hours were spent quietly radiating the specific energy of someone who has clearly not done their reading.
9. The Great “How Are You” Miscalculation
In New Zealand, if a passing acquaintance asks “how are you?”, they are, more often than not, actually asking how you are. They want a brief, genuine answer. They will pause to hear it. In London, “how are you?” in a corridor context is a greeting, not a question. It does not require a response beyond “fine thanks, you?” and it certainly does not require the four-sentence update I gave to a nurse from a neighbouring ward during my second week, who was already three steps past me before I had finished my first sentence. She did not look back. I finished the sentence anyway, out of stubbornness, and then stood in the corridor alone, which was arguably the low point.
10. Telling a Patient I Was “From New Zealand” When He Asked “Where’s That Accent From?” and Then Spending Eight Minutes Explaining New Zealand
He was a voluntary patient, he had time, and he seemed genuinely interested, so I do not entirely regret this one. But what began as a brief explanation of where Christchurch is relative to Australia expanded, somehow, into a fairly comprehensive overview of New Zealand’s geography, the Canterbury earthquakes, the general excellence of the South Island, and a brief digression into the All Blacks’ 2015 Rugby World Cup victory. He listened politely throughout. When I finally stopped, he nodded and said: “Sounds lovely. I’m from Peckham, myself.” I have since developed a much shorter answer to the accent question. Two sentences, maximum. I stick to it rigorously.
In Closing
If any of this has been useful – not for the practical information, which is largely absent, but for the reassurance that arriving somewhere new and doing things wrong is a completely normal and survivable part of the experience – then I am glad. London will humble you. It will humble you about bins, biscuit tins, public transport, and the precise register in which to address a consultant. It will not, I promise, humble you permanently. You will learn which bin is which. You will learn to say “fine thanks” and keep walking. You will, eventually, even find the dairy.
