Somewhere, a child has unwrapped a gift this Christmas of a doctor and nurses kit, complete with uniform, junior stethoscope, thermometer, blood pressure monitor, ear scope, and the rest of the trappings.
Maybe it’s just a fun present for the moment. Of course, it may be an adult’s fantasy of seeing their child grow up to be a skilled and respected member of the medical profession, benevolently dispensing care and treatment to all-comers.
Or, much better, it may be an acknowledgement of a real and growing childhood desire of a passion for the caring professions. One that may stick, through school and all the demands of getting onto an apprenticeship course or into University. Through the teaching hospitals and specialist training, the whole thing. Sticking with it and being true to the desire within to care.
A student nurse was having a blood test herself. As she saw the tube filling with blood, she fainted. When she came to, the phlebotomist suggested she might need to reconsider her choice of career. Fortunately for many, she didn’t. Instead, after twenty years of professional nursing, Christie Watson wrote her beautiful book, “The language of kindness.”
It is packed with honesty and insight, deep humour and frequent tears. Not least as she opens the story of her own father’s palliative care and Cheryl, the nurse who became his closest friend and companion in his last days. A story of profound kindness that could be repeated many times from within the profession.
Like the nurse who explained to us why she chose to work in ICU and wouldn’t want to be anywhere else. “I was working on a very busy ward and a patient asked me to get her some toilet paper. I was distracted by other demands and didn’t get back to her. I only remembered on my way home from my shift. So I prefer ICU. Its busy, intense, but now I can usually give concentrated care to one, or two, patients. That’s what I came into nursing to do.”
When Live Loudly Donate Proudly’s Lucia was recovering from her first liver transplant, amid all the others providing excellent care was a physiotherapist. While Lucia worked on her exercises and we chatted with the physio, to our mutual surprise, we discovered that we had met her many years earlier when, as a young girl, she had been part of a group of young people known to Lucia’s dad. He had no clues then that she would eventually play a key part in Lucia’s healing, or that the physio would be instrumental in Lucia becoming part of the Birmingham Children’s Hospital Transplant Games team, profoundly nurturing her mental health and self-confidence.
What if some of those children who opened their presents a few days ago, maybe some whom we know ourselves, grow up to be the cardiologists, anaesthetists, physiotherapists, psychologists, ICU nurses who will care for us, or for our children? What might we do to make their pathway smoother to being the best they could be, for their sake and for ours?
Thank you to those who start young, for whatever catches your attention and holds your commitment to the caring profession. Stick at it, we really need you, and nothing beats learning the ‘language of kindness’…