Not enjoying placement?

At the moment I am doing my last placement of my second year, health visiting. This is quite an odd placement for me as I am training to be an adult nurse. I went into the placement thinking that it would be a good opportunity to learn how to support parents, as I have met many patients who are parents that need supporting and I have been at a loss at what to do. 

I feel as though I was completely wrong. Although health visitors do support parents and families, it is more child centred. The health visitors I am working with are highly involved with post-natal depression and child protection issues. Supporting mothers with post-natal depression really interests me, as this is something I may come across, however it is not always appropriate for me to attend these visits, meaning I miss out on some crucial learning. 

More so, child protection is something I need to be aware of, however I also cannot always be involved in that. So my question was then, what on earth can I get out of this placement? 

At first thought, I was really disheartened and I was thinking that the next 4 weeks were going to be a waste of my training. But then I got to thinking hard and I thought of a few things that I might get out of this placement. And I thought these may be useful to others who might be going through the same thing.

1. Communication. I feel as though this is the perfect opportunity to really focus on my communication skills, with both adults and children. Children can come onto adults wards to visit family members and it would be important as a nurse to be able to communicate with these children, in the hopes of making them feel more comfortable in the strange setting such as a hospital. Also, if I end up working in the community as a district nurse I may visit someone with a child and it would be useful to be able to communicate with the child as well as the patient I am visiting. 

2. Confidence. I used to be a very shy person, and at times I still can be shy. My last placement in the intensive care unit really brought me out of my shell and I feel as though I am 100% more confident than I was when I first started that placement. I really have come a long way, but since this placement is so much out of my comfort zone I feel as though this is a good time for me to really really push myself, talk to patients when I feel scared and really put myself out there. 

3. Visits. By visits I mean exploring what else is out there in the community. I have planned visits with the district nurses, community midwife, GP's, Nursery nurse practitioners, pharmacy and to a children's centre. I feel as though by doing this I can gain more of an insight into what's out there for people who are in the community, giving myself more of an advantage when I am asked for advice and when I meet people who need a service but didn't know it is out there. 

That's all I have planned as it's such a short placement. But I am going to try so hard to get the best out of it. I'll report back in 4 weeks!!