For the Love of Nurses

In good company

On 23rd April 2016 I had four night shifts ahead of me on the haematology ward. I remember the date because Beyonce just released Lemonade. I would always do four night shifts together and it was always a daunting prospect: the idea of not being part of the world for all that time, and I love being part of the world. Pete, my then boyfriend, and his sister, Lucy, and I were pottering around la Sheff on this day and Lucy told me to listen to the Woman's Hour podcast in collaboration with the Royal College of Nursing (RCN).

As I was getting ready, psyching myself up for my first of four, I listened to this episode. I listened to nurses talking about nursing: nurses from a loooooooong time ago, nurses from today, nurses doing all sorts of things. And it felt so nice. It seemed that nursing was no longer just about me being apprehensive before a stretch of nights; it was a something that has always been there and will always be there. It dawned on me then that as a nurse I am part of something bigger: a sorority and fraternity... a community. Essentially, I felt a little less lonely knowing that I wouldn't be the only nurse leaving their TV, boyfriend and velvet sofa bought recently on finance that evening to go and care for others. I might not be part of the world for the foreseeable, but I was part of a world. 

Since working this out, I've clung to nurses. To meeting them, to understanding their motivations, to learning from and being inspired by them, to listening to them on podcasts as I power walked across Hyde Park and up Ecclesall Road South on my commutes. I've worked in a few clinical areas across London and Sheffield and have met so many nurses and support workers that I’ve wanted to scoop up and put in my pocket. This may be the nurse consultant at the vanguard of research and changing practice, it might be a particularly charismatic staff nurse who makes a night shift fly by, or a support worker who has the effect of both morphine and midazolam in their presence alone.

Grazia

In the pandemic, it felt as though we were hearing and reading people talking about nurses but not enough from actual nurses. And then I saw a copy of Grazia which had a nurse on the front, Richenda Browne. Inside she gave an interview about her work in an A&E in Central London. Nothing fancy, just what  she and her teams have been doing. But it felt so good to read. I developed a project with NHS England which aimed to capture the stories of nurses up and down the country. We ran online sessions during which nurses could share their stories and coach each other in how to make their stories come alive. Participating in these sessions further reinforced my love for an extended nursing community.

Maintenant

And that’s what brings me here. I want to meet my nursing colleagues in this part of the world: Kampala, Uganda, East Africa - to see how the team here do what my colleagues and I do at St Luke's do but with different training, resources, different scope of practice and working in a different culture looking after communities with likely different needs. I kind of know what it means to be a nurse in the UK but I have no idea what it means to be a nurse anywhere else. I hope to learn from the teams at Hospice Africa and share everything I learn with my colleagues in Sheffield. 

Why Hospice Africa?

Hospice Africa was founded in 1993 by Dr Anne Merriman and Nurse Fazal Mbaraka. Dr Anne and Fazal's vision was and is to provide palliative care for all in need in Africa. In order to reach that vision, Hospice Africa has established a model hospice to demonstrate that palliative care is both possible and affordable and to spread this practice through training, education and policy. 30 years ago when HA was established, there were four African countries practicing palliative care, today there are 37. HA has an institute of palliative care where clinicians come from all over Africa - and increasingly further afield - to study and to share the teachings with their colleagues. As such a hub, perhaps the hub, of palliative care in Africa, Hospice Africa is the right place for me to begin.