Recently Junior Doctors’ strike is hugging headlines, perhaps for all the wrong reasons. While pay, long unsocial hours draw all the attention, another important, emotion draining reason has been missing from the equation. Perhaps it affects indefatigable elocutionist nurses more than luminary consultants and erudite doctors who pay whirlwind visits while nurses are omnipresent, taking care 24 hours a day. Although nurses are trained not to get involved personally, keep emotions in check, it is easier said than done, especially when caring for sweet, adorable children and equally affectionate grannies.
So often nurses are presented with boxes of sweets and bunch of flowers which they distribute among lonely, unvisited patients. It is humanly impossible to remain unaffected when losing such patients we may have cared for months. It is no different than losing family member. This is introspective time when nurses need understanding of family members, as without their support nurses’ job could be million times more difficult. No wonder so many nurses drop out half way or choose non stressful nursing appointments after qualification, taking-up posts in schools, doctors’ surgeries and industrial establishments, treating minor accidents, ailments rather than life threatening illnesses on front-line duties.
Nurses may not be lustre, all consuming “Florence Nightingale” any more but most are literally married to their profession for life, although in today’s materialistic, super-efficient world, appreciation is thin on the ground!
Kumudini Valambia
By email
