What nurses can teach us
[Music]
i am sick
and tired
of
compassion i wasn’t always like this
when i started my nurse training at the
age of 17
i didn’t think much about compassion at
all
i thought about resuscitation and saving
lives and cracking chests
i thought a lot about television
programs like er
and i thought a great deal about george
clooney
but nursing taught me pretty quickly
that saving lives is about a lot more
than cracking chests
in 2018 i left the nursing register and
i am a writer and professor of medical
and health humanities and my research
over the last few years has been about
compassion and empathy and kindness and
what it means to be human
and central to the idea of all my work
is that compassion is the most important
thing of all
and yet i realized
that during my years as a hospital nurse
particularly in intensive care
i felt a bit burnt out
apathetic
and sometimes even indifferent
to extreme suffering
i was experiencing compassion fatigue
pain and trauma like viruses can be
extremely infectious and nurses and
other healthcare workers they swallow
suffering every single day
indeed the word compassion comes from
latin compassiona which means to suffer
with suffering together
and there’s only so long you can do that
for
if you do it right
without becoming a little bit numb
i felt a bit numb
and then came the pandemic
i remember being on a flight once
coming back from kenya and there was an
announcement on the tannoy
is there a doctor or nurse on board the
plane
i looked around
nothing
and then the announcement again is there
a nurse or doctor on board the plane
please make yourself known to the cabin
crew
now
i had no intention of making myself
known
in fact i slid down my seat
um i wanted to drink my gin and tonic
and read my magazine in peace but
the announcement again
and this time the voice was urgent is
there a healthcare worker on the plane
please we need help
we need help
and so i slowly and reluctantly raised
my hand
during the first peak of this pandemic i
slowly and i reluctantly raised my hand
again and i returned to clinical work
for a short time and i found myself the
lead nurse for compassionate care
in one of the field hospitals that had
been hastily set up in just nine days as
a coveted icu
we were told our function was to save as
many lives as possible
and it quickly became very apparent with
this awful awful disease
that we weren’t going to save anywhere
near as many lives as we wanted to
and compassion became our central aim
compassion we realized
is how history will judge us
and it’s how history should judge us
and we weren’t alone in our thinking
there was a time at the beginning of
this a hot moment when the world felt
alive
with compassion
it’s like we were shaken awake
how quickly we forget
one minute people were on their
doorsteps they were banging pots and
clapping for carers and delivering food
parcels to their neighbors who were
shielding and the very next moment
people’s curtains closed
everyone shuffled past each other heads
down no eye contact
everyone
turned inwards we all did just trying to
process our own pain
and a collective numbness swept through
the world
it is no
surprise we are bombarded with tragedy
the kovid 19 pandemic uncovered the
other pandemics that already existed
loneliness
inequality injustice violence racism
mental illness
the events in afghanistan they’re hard
to even think of
and
the existential threat of climate change
we are now told is code red for humanity
we
are tired
we are overwhelmed
and we are saturated with images of
devastating suffering and so sometimes
it’s all we can do to turn off the
relentless news
and watch love island instead
maybe that’s just me
but it is possible to recover from this
compassion fatigue we must recover from
it
i know it’s possible because i did
shortly after returning to clinical work
i remembered something really really
important i remembered what my patients
had taught me
and i remembered what it means to be a
nurse
in all my years in hospitals i never
once met george clooney
but i did meet lots of patients like
betty
betty was elderly and frail and she was
alone and she was lying on a trolley in
a corridor
outside accident in emergency she’d come
into the hospital with chest pain and
hypothermia
i did a 12 lead ecg some observations
some blood tests and we couldn’t find
anything at all wrong with betty so i
got this bear hugger machine which has
white billowing fabric
to warm her up and i made her a sandwich
and a cup of tea and i just sat with her
and held her hand
and then she told me about stan
she told me stan her husband of a
lifetime had died in the hospital two
weeks before
she described her heart pain
not chest pain
she told me how they had danced and how
the fabric from the bear hugger machine
reminded her of the parachute silk from
her wedding dress
and how time flies
and she said that i’d saved her life and
of course i’d done no such thing i just
sat with her a while and i held her hand
but it was impossible to tell where
betty’s hand ended and where my hand
began and nursing exists in that space
we
exist in that space
what a privilege to hold the hand of a
person at the frailest most extreme and
significant moments of their life
to be a nurse
nurses remind us that we are not alone
not even now
but of course they do a lot more than
hold hands
nurses are safety critical rigorously
trained professionals they are
scientists and researchers and leaders
and entrepreneurs
and artists and their clinical experts
they weave around our world caring for
people in every setting you can imagine
school nurses district nurses
practitioners working in mental health
and learning disability settings
forensic nurses military nurses nurses
working in prisons on homeless
healthcare teams in hospices with looked
after children
there are even nurses working behind the
scenes on love island
the world health organization estimates
there are 27.9 million nurses globally
27.9 million individuals who have
despite personal risk
placed compassion at the center of their
universe
for us
nursing is a language with many
different accents but it’s a universal
language too it’s a kind of faith in
itself with compassion at its core
a belief and respect in every single
individual’s worth regardless
if how we treat our most vulnerable is a
measure of our society then the act of
nursing itself is a measure of our
humanity
and we all are now thinking during this
time of great suffering about our
humanity
who are we
who are we meant to be
kovid has given all of us the time for
radical change and the chance for
radical change
but we must shake ourselves awake again
and remember the action we saw at the
beginning of this pandemic when we
glimpsed
our capacity
for grace
for tolerance
and for love
we can remind each other of our
potential by listening really listening
thinking of other families as well as
our own
by helping those who need help in
practical ways and building inclusive
communities betty was right
nurses are right
compassion cannot cure us
but compassion can save us regardless
the word compassion comes from
compassion and meaning to suffer with
but the word suffer comes from feeling
to feel keenly
in this age of isolationism and division
and hatred
it is not feeling anything
that we all must fear
in order to turn outwards we need to
feel all the feelings and remember our
capacity
our incredible human spirit
it’s time for us to raise our hands
rumi was a 13th century afghan poet in
my opinion he was the greatest poet in
all of history and i’m going to leave
you with his words more relevant today
than perhaps ever
i know you are tired
but come
this is the way
thank you
you