There is something warm and fuzzy about the word nurse as they are seen to be kind and caring when we are in need. And of course they are, but today’s nurses are highly skilled professionals. Quite different to the nurses of a few decades ago — yes we were skilled professionals too but without the technical and scientific knowledge they have today.
We’ve just celebrated International Nurses Day and recognition for our nurses seems to be at an all-time high due to COVID19. I was a nurse for more than thirty years and I did my training on the job, learning as we went and comparing my training to that of today’s nurse is like comparing apples to oranges. The role of the nurse has changed considerably yet fundamentally remains the same — that of carer to the sick. Yet the nurse of today has a vastly different skill-set to those of my era, however they are still not truly appreciated for all that they do.
I was watching a program where a professor of nursing was being interviewed and she outlined some of the ways where nurses are not truly given credence for their skills. A comment was made about a visit to a doctors surgery where the practise nurse changed a dressing and had to have the doctor come and approve it before the patient left. Another comment was that a lot of the doctors on-the-job training was actually done by senior nursing staff — that obviously hasn’t changed in decades as I remember teaching new resident doctors. Then six months later after they’d practised for a bit the doctors were telling us how to do it!
But it goes deeper than that. I’d been nursing for many years and decided that if I wanted to progress any further I needed to upgrade my qualifications. So I applied to do my Diploma of Nursing via distance education. I was accepted into the course on the proviso that I took an aptitude test as they felt that nurses were not suitable for tertiary education! How demeaning. However I did pass and achieved my Diploma and went on to get my Bachelor of Nursing — and at the same time I was working full time and managing a home with three primary school children.
Nurses are very capable people. Some of us are very controlling and bossy, expecting to be obeyed at all times. Yet it’s the nurses who do the really tough jobs that most of the public would struggle to do. We become very strong because of the work we do — I say ‘we’ because once a nurse ……
It was the strength I learned from nursing that helped me cope with the suicide of my daughter. To come home and find the paramedics that I saw every week on the job working to revive Kelly was probably the most difficult thing I’d ever done in my life. But as a nurse you get used to seeing horrible things and there is no time to fall in a heap — you just have to get on with the job.
So to those nurses working in the health field today under such extreme conditions and not having enough equipment and supplies to protect them — I salute you all — you are doing a wonderful job.
#copingsuicide #thoughtleader