13/04/2021
👩⚕️Wikipedia: ‘Nursing is a profession within the health care sector focused on the care of individuals, families, and communities so they may attain, maintain, or recover optimal health and quality of life.’ The last part ‘Quality of life’, has felt more meaningful during the past year.
👩⚕️I’ve been absent on social media and the reason for that is my profession. 2020-21 has been the most challenging but not for the most obvious reasons. Numerous times friends have kindly asked me ‘how are you coping at work now with COVID?’ I am not an ITU nurse (goodness knows my heart can’t cope with the constant adrenaline rush!) and I have the upmost respect for those who really are the definition of front line medics.
I am a dermatology nurse, the area of medicine often dismissed as an area you work in nearer retirement age. No drama apparently, although this is not always true. So in that sense, apart from wearing PPE, my role has not dramatically changed with COVID.
👩⚕️Being a nurse is not a job, it surrounds you everyday, it flows through your veins. It often chews you up and spits you out. It reshapes and moulds you if you allow it to.
👩⚕️ So back to my reason for this post, my social media absence.
In clinic, at the start of any consultation I’ll always ask ‘how are you?’ Standard question. Prior to this pandemic, my patients would answer with a very brief sentence before getting down to the nitty gritty, the reason for their appointment, their skin. However during the past year the answers I’ve heard to this question have kept me awake at night, they’ve made me cry and made me feel thankful for my daily, often monotonous, routine.
👩⚕️ I’ve heard horrific experiences of grief, parents crying because they’ve felt they’ve failed their children during homeschooling, people who have lost their jobs, people with ‘long covid’, people suffering with mental health issues for the first time in their lives and the list goes on.
It’s always been easy to answer ‘I’m fine Thankyou and how are you?’ but I’m so thankful that many patients haven’t chosen this easy option and have shared so much.
👩⚕️So my absence....sorry I keep going off piste but I promise I’ll get to the point! I’ve found it challenging to sit in this social media space and talk about skin/skincare when my mind has been absolutely taken over with just being a nurse. I am a nurse, it’s not what I do, it is who I am. It really is a great job, despite how it often appears.
I hope future generations of nurses aren’t put off by the pay (eye roll at the 1% pay rise), long hours and unsociable shifts because actually being that listening ear, that comforting hand to hold and a patients advocate is everything.
👩⚕️ I wish I could go back to my student self, the nurse in the picture, when I moaned that the ward I was working on had an outbreak of D&V which happened to be on my 18th birthday....that was a sh** birthday, excuse the pun! I would tell my naive self to prepare to feel like you’re living in a washing machine but you’ll come out better than you went in.
