Discovering who I am

I was a nurse. The role I had longed to be in was a weight around my neck, I was told constantly I needed to do better and prove my worth. At the time I was in outpatients, not the role I had ever wanted to do. It was the same old grind day in and day out, the doctors and consultants had to be waited on hand and foot. Bringing them tea and biscuits through a full waiting area only to have a witty patient cry out "where's mine...I had lost count how many times that was thrown at me.

I longed to be a proper nurse, to look after people, to actually care. In outpatients, the patients were just names on a list to be processed on a conveyor belt, to be seen by the doctors. I felt like a dogsbody, a gofer, not a healthcare professional.

That's when I saw the job advert in the paper, it was working night shift in a little 26 bed nursing home for people with disabilities. It was just the role I was looking for, I instantly clicked with the home manager at the interview and she told me later that she was blown away by my passion.

We had a little team, two nurses and two health care assistants. The healthcare assistants were all my mums age and older and mothered me. I felt needed for the first time in my career and even better I felt respected. There were bad points, they had the old ritual of pulling people out of bed at 6am. I hated it and never seemed to break people away from it. We also got lumped with a ton of leftover work, sometimes it was nearly 1am when we managed to get people to bed.

At that point in time my mum was away in New Zealand, so I had my little work family. At Christmas we used to cook a meal together, to celebrate after everyone was in bed. We also had the fun role of playing Santa and placing presents by the patients beds during the night. I enjoyed working over the Christmas period, and then I got to spend New Year with friends.

I loved night shifts, it felt like real nursing care getting people out of their wheelchairs and placing pillows in the right places and getting them comfortable to sleep. I liked doing the checks, when the halls were dark and quiet. I enjoyed setting up the feed pumps and making sure people felt safe and secure.

One particular night a gentleman with severe Parkinsons Disease, was agitated and trying to communicate something to me. I crossed my heart and promised I would be back as soon as I could. It took me a couple of hours, but after medication round was done and people were settled I sat beside him and we talked. He was very difficult to understand, his voice was a whisper and he spoke very rapidly. I pieced together what he was saying word by word, slowly over the course of an hour. He told me he was frightened, he could see a man standing at the side of his room watching him. I went to where he was pointed, stood where he saw the man, and reassured him it was his mind messing with him. An unfortunate side effect of Parkinsons medicines is hallucinations. We chatted a little and I made him chuckle, then got him comfortable and he managed to sleep.

This to me was proper nursing, I was responsible for the building and its occupants and their safety. My confidence grew and started to blossom