Slo­gans on tee shirts gen­er­al­ly seem to run from gar­ish to inane and over-hyped. In a place I’d rather not have to spend time, I’ve final­ly seen one that accu­rate­ly describes those who wear it as they go about a job its most famous prac­ti­tion­er called her “God-giv­en calling.”

When Flo­rence Nightin­gale answered that call at the height of the Crimean War in 1854, nurs­ing was viewed by the upper social class­es she was born into as “low­ly menial labor”.
I dare say many who have nev­er need­ed nurs­ing view the pro­fes­sion the same way.

Spend time sit­ting next to one of the beds in a ward where most­ly young women and a few men nev­er seem to stand still, how­ev­er, and you’ll realise their shirt encap­su­lates the real version.
Cer­tain­ly those who sport it, assist­ed by coun­ter­parts in red shirts with PSW (Per­son­al Sup­port Work­er) on the front and back, spend sig­nif­i­cant parts of their work­ing day per­form­ing tasks that by their very nature are undig­ni­fied in the extreme, for both them and their patients.
And yet, in my recent expe­ri­ence, they do it in such a way that it seems the most nat­ur­al, nor­mal and per­fect­ly accept­able part of their day and their patients’ life. Which leads one to won­der why there are so many peo­ple in this world who are rude to the point of offen­sive and often aggres­sive, over the slight­est incon­ve­nience in what they con­sid­er their God-giv­en right to do what­ev­er they want, when­ev­er and how­ev­er they want.  Includ­ing jobs for which they are often as not paid con­sid­er­ably bet­ter than nurses.

                         THE WAY IT SHOULDN’T BE

I am not so naïve as to assume or sug­gest that the exam­ples I have been wit­ness­ing are uni­ver­sal. Quite the contrary. 
Some years ago, I spent time in one of Rome’s lead­ing hos­pi­tals with malar­ia. When I came out of three days of bed-soak­ing sweats, uncon­trol­lable shak­ing and LSD-wor­thy hal­lu­ci­na­tions, often as not all at the same time, a nurse placed a ther­mome­ter beside my bed, told me to take my tem­per­a­ture, and disappeared. 
A request for some­thing to cope with a fever-induced split­ting headache was met with a gauze-wrapped object plonked on the bed­side table. “What’s this?” I croaked.
“A sup­pos­i­to­ry.”
“I don’t like sup­pos­i­to­ries,” I said.
“Nei­ther do I,” the nurse replied, and left the room.
To wash my hands, I had to stag­ger down a hall­way to a com­mon bath­room, haul­ing the “tree” that held the drip bot­tles attached by tubes to my left arm.
Lest I seem over­ly crit­i­cal, let it be not­ed that I’m still here.
Equal­ly, I don’t doubt for a moment that there are ver­sions of Nurse Ratched, the vil­lain of Ken Kesey’s bril­liant “One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest”, whom one ana­lyst of the opus described as “a sym­bol of auto­crat­ic con­trol and blithe bar­barism, who takes qui­et plea­sure in tor­tur­ing her patients through a com­bi­na­tion of med­i­c­i­nal con­trol and psy­cho­log­i­cal manipulation.”

                           THE WAY IT IS

By way of con­trast, I watched as a patient was lift­ed from her bed and low­ered into a wheel­chair by a “Hoy­er Lift”, a sling and pul­ley appa­ra­tus that resem­bles the cranes used in con­tain­er ports. It requires con­sid­er­able care, and phys­i­cal effort on the part of at least two and some­times three nurs­es and PSWs, who could be for­giv­en if they saw the patient more as car­go than a per­son. Instead, cheer­ful ban­ter and light-heart­ed jok­ing put the uncom­fort­able and under­stand­ably ner­vous patient at ease.
Any­one who has spent time con­fined to a med­ical insti­tu­tion knows that depres­sion, irri­ta­tion and unease to vary­ing degrees are part and par­cel of the sen­tence. Get­ting beyond that has much to do with the atti­tude of those in charge.
A wiz­ened lady in a wheel­chair rubbed her hand over hair that would have made Sinead O’Connor seem hir­sute. “Chemo made it fall out,” she said. 
When I told her the hair of sev­er­al friends of mine who’d had chemo grew back more lux­u­ri­ant than it had ever been, she grinned and said: “Mine’s already com­ing back. And I’m 83.”
Fur­ther down the hall, a man in a wheel­chair, slumped slight­ly for­ward, the feet below his pyja­ma bot­toms clad in slip­pers, says loud­ly that he needs to get back to his room because, “my wife is wait­ing for me”. She isn’t and nev­er will be again. The nurse who comes to wheel him there goes slow­ly, so that by the time he reach­es his room, he will have for­got­ten that, too. 
And not to be smug or rub salt in wounds, but Amer­i­can read­ers might be inter­est­ed to know that all of the above care, and the med­ica­tions that go with it, is free here in Canada.
The tee shirts, on the oth­er hand, are hard-earned…every long shift of every day.

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