What it means to be a nurse

There are a couple of topics that have raised commentary this week in the media both of which have featured predominantly in my life and which I feel strongly enough about to want to add my own thoughts and perspectives. The first topic relates to what it means to be a nurse and the second what it means to be a tennis fan which I’ll post in a day or so.
The subject of nurses has arisen this week chiefly due to the Health Ministers meeting with several nurses which has added to the understandably heated debate around the NHS and the nursing profession, both of which are meaty enough themes to require their own blog post at a later date.
The more personal question for me around what it means to be a nurse was a raised during a conversation on Twitter with someone who is studying for a degree in Adult Nursing. My response was one of sympathy in relation to requirements of a dissertation as well as the subject matter and the phrase I used was “as a former nurse”. I used this instinctively / subconsciously but it’s not the first time I have distanced myself from the profession. It’s not as if I don’t value the effort, time and commitment I put in to achieve the qualification, particularly as I discovered I was pregnant in the last year of training and had to return after maternity leave to complete the exams and registration required to qualify. Nurse education and training has changed over the years and although a diploma and degree qualification is attainable now as part of the training it wasn’t then and I’ve since studied further to achieve both of these; indicating that at one time I was happy in the profession I was practising in.
So what changed? When I reflected on this I realised that it’s because I feel awkward. And I realise that sounds naff but there are a few reasons for this feeling and I’ll attempt to explain.
The first one is due to professional accountability. Growing up my grandfather instilled in me that if you do something you do it well, you see it through, and you take responsibility for your actions. Excellent lessons I’ve always thought but it saddens me that nursing today finds it difficult to maintain these objectives and for numerous reasons. Not least the lack of staff and endless processes within the current NHS system that creates inefficiencies of time and cost. Suffice to say that it is hard for the profession which taught me so much is no longer able to consistently meet the basic and holistic requirements of care. I heard this week that a newly qualified nurse was sacked due to a variety of professional transgressions against the professional nursing code of conduct. One of which was despite monitoring heart rate, blood pressure etc she was unable to identify that the patient was bleeding and therefore did not take the necessary action needed nor escalate the situation. These are basic nursing skills, not only the mechanics of recording but recognising the significance of what you’re seeing. Lessons that used to be learned as a student nurse. The patient later went to theatre for surgery and was fine.
The second reason is purely selfish and its due to the fact that whenever people find out I’m a nurse and even though I’m still registered I no longer practising clinically, the expectation is that I’ll be able to diagnose a variety of mysterious ailments or provide a prognosis on a relative who has cancer or receiving palliative care; the area in which I worked. If these questions occur in a social setting it is not only frustrating as I want to yell, “please go see your GP if its bothering you that much” or embarrassed as then everyone else present usually wants to hear what I have to say. Which is usually a polite version of “go and see your GP”
The final reason is due to the public’s perception of nurses, which is twofold. Either they are regarded as Angels or "up for it" girls in the style of ‘Carry on Nurse’ or fancy dress costumes. The latter is usually pretty light hearted fun but the former can grate enormously. None of us are angels. Like most professional groups, nursing consist of a small percentage of staff who are excellent, are able to multitask, prioritise an endless list at speed, flexibly re prioritise when something urgent is needed, are organised, can deal with medics who think they know everything, excellent or know less than them, are gentle and have endless patience. The main percentage of nursing staff are good solid professional s who are there to do a good job and hopefully go home on time at the end of the day. The remainder and this is also a small percentage are evil hags, bags and bitches and you wouldn’t want to give them house room if you were dying; this includes both males and females.
I doesn’t matter where you work, you will meet people who fall either in or across all these categories and hopefully those who are being a bitch are venting on other staff and not the patients. As I remember they’re usually dumping their venom on the student nurses. Sometimes I wonder how I ever got through my nurse training. Some of the old nursing sisters who were close to retiring when I started, I think had been around since the Boer War.
Don’t get me wrong, for many years I enjoyed what I did and I met and learnt how to deal with a variety characters and situations. Let’s face it there aren’t many jobs where within 15 minutes of meeting someone you have them removing their clothes, donning an unattractive backless gown and answering lots of personal and detailed questions. And don’t forget my grandfather’s ethos, I was proud to do an excellent job and be the best nurse I could be.
But out of the workplace the perceived opinions of my role were difficult to contend with and when I started managing staff and then programmes rather than patients it was with sigh of relief that I no longer needed embark on lengthy explanations about what I did. And if and when I do admit to being a nurse I’m always asked it I miss it. Honestly like most jobs I miss the good parts and for the most its a challenging and rewarding job and I miss the people. I can honestly say I don’t miss dealing with bodily fluids on a daily, and sometimes hourly basis.
Well its difficult to say if I’ve really answered what I set out to which is what it means to be a nurse, but for those of you who aren’t in the nursing profession I hope you’ve found it interesting.