Callum Bottom is a Clinical Nurse Manager in Acute Medicine and Toxicology at the Royal Infirmary of Edinburgh, recently promoted from his post as a Senior Charge Nurse in the Acute Medical Unit (AMU).
He has been a nurse for 12 years, spending most of that time in the AMU or the Accident and Emergency department. Even though his new role is managerial, he hopes to still keep his hand in nursing and clinical work.
Originally from Inverness, Callum remembers many instances of patients assuming he was a doctor because of his gender. “There’s less of that now,” Callum says. “It was definitely a generational assumption depending on the age of the patient, so now you don’t see it as much.
“We also have a lot more variety within the nursing fields. Nurses are becoming Advanced Nurse Practitioners and moving into different roles from that. And there are more men in nursing, which is great!”
Callum has spent his entire nursing career in NHS Lothian, and though he has been excited for his colleagues who have gone abroad or to different organisations, he is happy to have stayed in Lothian. “The department is like a family,” he says. “I enjoy working here, and I get enough development opportunities locally that I don’t see the need to move. The job itself is hard enough – you don’t want to add an ill-fitting environment onto that. Here, we are all about teamwork and support, and that suits me very well.”
The Acute Medical Unit is a sister ward to the Accident and Emergency department, and it also hosts a toxicology unit – one of the few in Scotland. Because of that, the care Callum and his team provide is varied, and no two days are the same.
“We’ve been very busy lately, as the pressures on A&E in particular have been immense,” Callum says. “But although it’s been busy, we’ve been supporting each other, discharging patients as quickly and as we safely can so that we can take some of the work from our A&E colleagues. We have 66 beds on our ward, and we can’t go above that. When we’re full, we’re full, but A&E doesn’t quite work like that.
“Staff flow is an important part of helping relieve the pressure. We help each other across wards and departments. I think that’s one of the ways in which NHS Lothian staff really shine – we all look out for each other and help out.”
For men who are looking to get into nursing, Callum is unequivocally positive in his advice. “Get into nursing!” he says. “Now is a better time than ever to join the NHS. It is progressing so fast as a profession, and there are new opportunities being created every day.
“We have diverse teams all over our organisation, and that creates an inclusive and welcoming environment. By being a man in nursing, that allows for us as a team to provide better care, because some patients only want to be looked after by certain genders. Bringing diversity to the forefront makes us better at providing care, which is what it’s all about.”
