It was Nurses Week last week. I did not write anything about nurses or honouring nurses. Not even complaining about nursing. But I did work in nursing. At the beginning of this year, going in depth about things - anything - has been a challenge that was laid on my table. The concept of a depth year didn’t originate from me. That would have involved acting on all of the swirling thoughts in my head. It did come from a CBC interview. Mary Hynes, on Tapestry, one Sunday afternoon, interviewed David Cain from Winnipeg about this idea of going in depth. Not buying anything new. This seemed like a great idea. I tend to be really tight with my money - until I’m not. I suppose it is more like thinking about being tight with my money.
So I started with that concept. Not buying anything new. As days and weeks progressed, I began looking at more things in depth, especially my nursing career. My retirement from nursing approaches ever more closely as I turned seventy years old in November of last year. I am still interested in and concerned about nursing. The part of nursing that interests me is the attitude of nursing. It sounds rather flip to talk about caring about and for our patients. Spending time with our patients. Today’s nurses are often instructed and encouraged to use the word ‘clients’. I do believe that this simple wording change moves us away from the attitude of nursing.
I have cared for individuals in most areas of nursing. Nursing in paediatrics and obstetrics have not interested me, but I have experienced the other side of paediatrics as a young teenager and of obstetrics as a young mom. Of course I did work in both areas in my nurse training years. Despite the little exposure in these two fields, I have cared for individuals from 1 1/2 years old to 108 years old. All along this age continuum, each person has required different care, but with the same attitude of nursing. Sick people need to feel safe, emotionally and physically. Each age, each level of ability, and many times each sort of vocabulary used, will involve different lengths of time. This is especially true for the very young, the very old, people new to being ill, chronic illnesses including addiction and mental health, surgical as opposed to medical issues, end of life concerns. Of course there are new moms, again including addiction and mental health concerns. Bedside nursing will require either more or less time involvement. Community referrals, and therefore community nursing, also requires more or less time involvement. In my present employment in Addictions Nursing at the Detox level, our age range is 19 years to over 80 years old. As the age increases, medical issues increase, infirmity increases and maybe also cognition may decrease. Nursing care requires constant shifting into what models of care are effective for each client (there’s that client word). Is this more psychiatric, geriatric, just out of adolescence or someone who is basically healthy? What nutritional issues need to be addressed?
Going in depth about the attitude of nursing has spoken to my inner beliefs and my personal nursing practice. As nurses we are challenged to fit the mold of whatever system we are in, what ever business model is in place, and unfortunately how some in medicine still see the role of nurses. That role is too often a ‘do as you are told’ attitude rather than a collaborative attitude. In any hospital, treatment centre or clinic nurses work in, our attitudes and practices of nursing mesh with best practices, the mission statement from the board room, as well as policies and protocols to provide emotional and physical safety our patients. When they do not mesh, it is a huge challenge for nurses to work with their patients, or clients, in the manner they were trained to and believe in. But we do it.
We provide skilled, compassionate nursing care without worrying about recognition. On a daily basis. Recognition is not part of a genuine nursing attitude, but it feels so good when it comes. It comes with a hand lettered card saying Thank you. Saying…you saved my life. Saying….I remember when you walked me through that anxiety attack. Saying…Thank you for taking care of my daughter ….my son….my dad….my mom. And so many other sayings each of us, individually or as a group, hear. Little threads outside of the larger health care settings telling us that the nursing practice we do is more important than any political health crises in the news.
Nurses do more than take blood pressures, record data on computers and give medications. We support each individual in the throes of their acute illness, in their abilities to step forward in their own recovery from illness, educate them about individual health care issues. We are not technology, we use technology. We are not secretaries, we do some documentation. We are not specifically pharmaceutically minded, we administer physician ordered medications. We do not formally diagnose our patients, we do recognize signs and symptoms. We save lives and we escort individuals through their final days. We support individuals as they move through a variety of severe diseases and conditions.
I am so very grateful to have worked with so many different nurses and in different areas over the last 50 years. You have each contributed such great depth to this profession! Thank you all for your wisdom, your support and your willingness to spend time and to deeply care for your patients.
“Nursing is an art…It is one of the Fine Arts:
I had almost said the finest of Fine Arts.”
~ Florence Nightingale
Sacred spaces
I swallowed my anger 
I had no idea how many 
Morag Gunn started out life with two loving parents. At age six, both parents died of influenza. Little Morag was taken to live with Christie and Prin Logan in the small fictional Manitoba town of Manawaka. Seems a simple enough story, however Christie was known as The Scavenger, the town of Manawaka’s garbage collector. Christie, a self made philosopher, told Morag many stories of her Scottish history, while Prin quiet and withdrawn, ate jelly donuts. Morag grew up being ashamed of her step-parents, and moved away as quickly as possible to Toronto and University. At Prin’s passing and later at Christie’s passing she realized with belated gratitude how deep her affections were for them. In University she met and married her English professor. Their relationship started passionately. They married and Morag left University. Her attempt to find respect and normalcy with Brooke Skelton failed as Brooke carried his own very secret baggage that he had buried deeply within his orderly, rigid life. In high school, Morag had a brief relationship with one of her classmates, Jules, nicknamed Skinner. His family, with long MetÃs history, lived in Manawaka's shanty town in great poverty, sadness and the cruel stigma of the time. This relationship with Jules rekindled at the end of her marriage and, although only distantly permanent, brought a daughter into the world. Margaret Laurence wove the stories together beautifully and with compassion. Her characters were finely drawn with nuances of the personalities and the histories that shaped them.
