My interest in nursing is about helping to make things better. I think it’s always been one of the main things that motivate me. It’s the reason why I wanted to become a nurse in the first place. I’m interested in big picture things; human rights, equity, social change, people. I’m also interested in the little things; like the ways that people work together, the moments that make up an interaction between a nurse and patient and what lies within it to make it good. I’m also interested in football.
Lately I’ve been thinking about the way nurses describe their job. I wonder if there are limitations in the language that we have to describe all the things that nurses do. I’ve noticed that when nurses describe their role they sometimes describe a list of tasks that they perform throughout the day, but I think that there is a lot more to what nurses do than their list of observable activities . Nursing is present in many less visible ways. On one level we might be undertaking wound management, but at the same time we are engaging with a person and what we offer is way beyond making a good choice with a dressing product.
Related to this is the mostly absent voice of nurses in the public domain. When there is a public discussion on any health related matter, the media is keen to report on the opinions of the doctors, the politicians, some consumer groups and sometimes some bureaucrats, but seldom do we hear from nurses unless it is directly about nursing. I think we need to strengthen that voice and find ways to describe what we really do.
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