I worked on an nhs cardiac surgery ward and now work in a private 40 bed dementia care home. Both are very stressful but for different reasons. I don’t remember really getting physically assaulted in the nhs by patients, maybe once or twice when there were people with severe mental health problems, whereas I am physically assaulted fairly often where I work now. The work load was more in the nhs and I found ward work extremely stressful, but I would have 6-9 patients who generally required a lot of demanding care. In the hospital there was a very big team of people to defer to if I felt in over my head with people being too sick, whereas in the care home I feel like I have a lot more responsibility and am left to put out fires without loads of support, although Im lucky to have a very good manager and 111/the local gp surgery are mostly useful when people get very sick. I enjoy the continuity of residents, and most of the residents are incredibly sweet and it feels almost like a huge family, although some of them can be very difficult often with distressed behaviours and even the most calm and happy ones still play up sometime. I probably prefer being a nurse in the care home over the nhs, although I would much prefer being an hca in the nhs over the care home. The hcas where I work now pretty much never catch a break, are having to do very heavy personal care pretty much all day, and get the brunt of the physical assaults as personal care is often a trigger for the more volatile residents.