IT IS a typical day on ward FH2 in the Adelaide Hospital. Staff nurse Deirdre Lang (29), in her navy and white Nightingale spot dress, is working the second last shift in an eight day roster. She says she is feeling tired because she worked a 13 hour shift the previous day.

A staff nurse for eight years, Nurse Lang says she earns a basic wage of around £16,500 with an additional £2,000 in shift premiums for working anti social hours. She is doing a three year diploma course that is costing her £1,800.

Nurse Lang calls herself a professional and wonders aloud how people who work with computers earn more than those who work with humans.

"It's just when you've paid your mortgages and the bills and you haven't any money to go out. I know it sounds idealistic but I didn't get into this job for the money, I really enjoy nursing."

This was her Thursday.

7 a.m. Nurse Lang joins other nurses for breakfast in the staff canteen. A colleague points out that 32 members of the hospital's 250 staff were off sick the previous day. They discuss briefly how temporary nurses are not eligible for sick pay from the hospital and are therefore reluctant to take days off when they are ill.

7.30 The shift starts. The ward is one nurse down for the morning. There are 30 hospital nurses out sick. The patients are served breakfast by the morning staff and the night staff who are coming to the end of their shift. Other nurses from both shifts, including Nurse Lang, attend a meeting on the overnight condition of the ward's 28 female patients.

7.50 Nurse Lang cheerfully greets the nine patients allocated to her in the semi private section of the ward, while doctors and surgeons begin their rounds. She banters with the patients whose health problems range from chronic back pain to an abscess.

She starts by testing the blood sugar level of a diabetic patient who is fasting because she will have surgery in a few hours. "You have to know how to prioritise your work and keep ahead of yourself," she says as she goes off to make beds and run a bath for another patient.

When she introduces me to the patients, one says: "Make sure you publish them in the best possible light". Another adds: "They are entitled to their rise."

8.30 Along with the charge nurse, Nurse Lang begins dispensing drugs from a trolley. She gives a "pre med" of Valium to a patient awaiting a hysterectomy. Another with chronic back pain receives morphine in advance of an epidural.

She makes another bed, checks the blood pressure of a few patients and gives morphine to a young woman who has recently had surgery to remove an abscess from her bottom. The patient, who spent Christmas in the hospital, praises the nursing staff.

"They should get what they are looking for. They run the place. They are really great. They work all over Christmas from early in the morning and they are always in good form. None of the rest of us have to do that."

9.45.Before she removes a colostomy bag from a patient who had a hysterectomy earlier in the week, Nurse Lang takes a urine specimen for testing to ensure there is no bladder infection. She checks the blood pressure of several more patients and tells a passing professor that a patient awaiting surgery wants to speak to him.

10.45. After returning from a 15 minute coffee break, Nurse Lang learns that a patient who had been due to be discharged is now being kept in and this means that another patient cannot be admitted.

She scrubs up and puts on gloves before dressing the wound of the woman who had the abscess removed. With the help of a nurse's aid, she gently removes the existing dressing and re packs the wound with gauze soaked in an antiseptic solution.

She has to work slowly and gently as the patient is in considerable pain despite having received morphine. She lies on her side, deeply inhaling Entonox pain relieving gas through a mask. As the patient grimaces and flinches, Nurse Lang pauses and reassures her.

"Let me know now if you want me to stop for a bit," she says. The procedure takes 25 minutes. "It's in cases like this that you need to take time because this patient needs you to do this slowly," she explains afterwards. "It might mean that you end up a bit behind in other things but you can't rush this."

Then she remakes the bed of a patient who has been sent to theatre and strips the bed of another who is going home.

Noon. After helping to serve lunch, Nurse Lang fills in a report on the condition and treatment of the patients in her care throughout the morning. She dispenses pain killers to several patients, including a woman who had gallstones removed by keyhole surgery.

1 p.m. After a 25 minute lunch break, Nurse Lang starts the daily observations, checking temperatures and filling in bedside charts. She changes the dressing of the patient with chronic back pain who was earlier given an epidural. "Four late staff come on duty. Extra staff fill in the vacancies in the afternoon shift.

1.45. A patient who was brought in earlier for a hysterectomy returns to the ward drowsy. Nurse Lang makes appointments for patients to go home, orders prescriptions from the pharmacy and checks there are adequate medicine supplies for each patient for the weekend. She makes a bed for a nurse in a different section who, "is busy.

2.20. Another patient who had skin grafted on to cancerous lesions returns from surgery. Nurse Lang dispenses some intravenous antibiotics and checks the controlled drugs cabinet with a charge nurse, to ensure it contains the correct amount.

3.00 Her shift ended, Nurse Lang goes home to sleep.

She is on holiday next week and then begins six months' training for her new position as clinical coordinator, in which she will work with students from TCD's new nursing course.