House Calls: Story 14

I am an expatriate Yank, transplanted to England 10 years ago, and married to a sweet British man; my son lives here. I am a 2nd-year student nurse at the University of Hertfordshire. And I want to quit my programme. Here's why:

When I go on a ward, my job, as I see it, isn't just to learn procedures and protocols, it is to make people feel better. I currently work on a short-stay surgical floor, so my patients need admissions, blood work, consenting, and possibly a cup of tea, if they are on the late list; or starving and dehydrated, if they are first.

Our nurses are incredibly busy, chasing charts, doing vital signs, checking for bleeding, bandaging/dressing wounds, and lots of IV infusions and drugs, but they rarely get the chance to laugh with patients. THAT is why I am there, or so I believe.

Because to me, medicine isn't just about curing the illness/sewing up the head wound/resuscitating a patient. It is also the business of looking after the soul, or the core, of the person in the bed in front of me. While I can only do certain procedures, and am learning how to do others, I don't feel that my chattiness, or my laughing with patients, is noticed. I would like to initiate a programme, or even a simple experiment, where I can see the difference my care will do for them.

I have been accused of being "too sensitive" for nursing. And yet, I see patients who would be considered the same as me, the only difference being that I am meant to be "professional." And my mentor, bless her, has said that a professional doesn't get chatty, or give cups of tea to mothers who have to see their sons wheeled down to surgery, because that isn't the practice of medicine, and since the hospital I work with has a massive debt, protocol requires that the relatives be able to buy their own cups of tea, or their own sandwiches.

I'm at my wits' end; I want to be a nurse, but seem to be encountering so much resistance to my place that I really could care less that my husband's greatest wish is that I STAY in the programme for the bursary, which is about £6.500 a year.*

To comfort a patient, to see the difference that your joke or your playfulness has with that patient's recovery, to give a mother a cup of tea and hear her say that it was the BEST cup of tea she'd had all day—these are the ways that I Want to make a difference to the healthcare system. The English have become Americanised; there are so many fears of lawsuits that documentation has become the religion—whatever happens, that is not meant to, the patient automatically thinks s/he has the right to sue, and be recompensed for suffering.

Sincerely,
Brooke Pugh
St/N Shefford
Bedfordshire, England

p.s. I have now withdrawn from the programme, as of 14 November, 2005...and am MUCH happier for it.

* Note: 12/14/05 = £6.500 (British Pounds) = $11,450.70 (USD)