The Making of a Nurse by Tilda Shalof Read Free Book Online

perform for them what they could not do for themselves. This sounded good to me, but another theory asserted that the nurse’s function was to help patients achieve “wellness” and “homeostasis.” Another invoked the words of Florence Nightingale: “The nurse is to put the patient in the condition for Nature to do the work of healing.” Another position claimed the nurse was a “body expert” and “health counsellor.” Oh, there were nursing theories aplenty, oodles of them!
    I think the professors felt they had to justify nursing as a profession worthy of university study. After all, for years, most nurses had diplomas and learned on the job, working in hospitals. One professor insisted that the rightful place of nursing was at the“Table of the Humanities,” in that it drew from the disciplines of philosophy, sociology, and psychology. Another argued that nursing straddled an equally secure position at the “Table of the Sciences.” Regrettably, I raised my hand to ask, “Doesn’t nursing also have a place at the
Kitchen Table?”
The professor frowned, but I felt that to be a nurse required certain personal, human qualities such as courtesy, warmth, kindness, and respect, attributes one presumably learned at home. No, they countered. These old-fashioned values held nursing back from making progress. Clinging to these outdated notions kept nursing in the Dark Ages. To be a nurse required skill and knowledge, not merely virtue and morality.
    But if nursing was both a science and an art, the science – the math and chemistry, etc. – was the easy part. The “art” involved lofty goals that were difficult, if not impossible, to attain. It was the “art” of nursing that required the nurse to enter the patient’s world, to understand the patient’s point of view and mitigate his isolation or her suffering. As a nurse, you were there to understand your patients’ existential questions and to assuage their pain, whether of body, mind, or spirit. You were expected to receive without judgment their emotional expression, whether it was to cry or to complain, or even to be rude to you. You were to praise them when they passed gas after surgery or had a successful bowel movement and then go off and empty the bedpan cheerfully. Your only need was to be needed and to meet other people’s needs. If a patient rang the call bell, you were to jump. You were there to make a cup of tea, if required. Along with all of that and above all, you were to assist your patient to achieve the ultimate, uncontested goal of all human beings: self-actualization. Oh yes, and don’t forget about their medications, fluid balances (their “in’s and out’s”), IV s, dressings, plus all the secretarial work, too. It was a tall order. No wonder they called us angels.
    IT WASN’T UNTIL second year that they finally let us get our hands on real, live “clients.” My first one was Mrs. Lenore Thompson, an eighty-three-year-old woman living in a retirement home indowntown Toronto. (I had to chuckle when I noticed that the facility was located kitty corner to The Anti-Aging Store, a place that sold elixirs, balms, and potions, touted to be life-enhancing and prolonging.) I was supposed to interview her and identify any health problems. She was a regal, white-haired lady who opened her display case to show me her collection of glass unicorns with great pride. She brought out her blood-pressure pills and I made a note of their names and the dosages she was taking. Then, she invited me to join her for lunch in the communal dining room. She cut up a slice of pizza with her knife and fork and chewed slowly. Then she put two chocolate sundaes on a tray and asked me to carry it back to her room. We sat enjoying them, but then it was time for “business” and my hands suddenly got jittery when I asked if I could take her vital signs.
    “Do you promise to return them to me afterwards?” she said impishly.
    That morning, I had made sure