OPINION

You may be born to nurse or take the scenic route

2 October, 2010 | By Mark Radcliffe

In the mid 1980s it wasn’t all backcombed hair and too much eyeliner. We had the miners’ strike, Thatcherism and Adam and his chuffin’ Ants. On top of that there wasn’t always much work around, so for some of us finding a “career” was a little bit random.

I had toyed with the idea of becoming a bongo player but I didn’t have any bongos. I flirted with the idea of speech therapy and even social work. I had a degree in nothing remotely vocational and I needed a job. That’s how I got
into nursing.

I was living with a nurse at the time. Nursing seemed to make her very happy. To the point sometimes where I wondered if she was taking drugs. “I’ll give that a go,” I thought (the nursing, not the drugs). Speech therapy said I had to wait six months, I didn’t like the way the social workers dressed and nursing said I could start the following week. Does that make me shallow? Well, obviously it makes me shallow but I mean, given that my motivation to take up nursing was so random, am I a poor example of the “specialness” required to become a nurse?

‘Speech therapy said I had to wait six months, I didn’t like the way social workers dressed and nursing said I could start next week. Does that make me shallow?’

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Probably. But I don’t think how we got here matters. I think what we do once we arrive is the only thing worth worrying about. I have come across nurses who have believed they have had a calling, who decided they wanted to nurse before they got out of the womb. They practised the nursing persona all their lives only to find that when they started to do the job they couldn’t cope with the organised chaos we like to refer to as a working day.

I teach nurses now. I like student nurses very much. I like their courage, their curiosity, their endeavour. Yes, I know one or two of them can be annoying but it was ever thus; in the main they work hard and care a great deal about getting better and doing some good.

Around the country thousands of students are starting their careers now. Some of them, like me, have just landed in the profession by chance and hope to marry their bemusement with the best of themselves and learn their trade. Others have had a nursing hat since they were 10. Most have reasoned that nursing was for them because of the strengths and values they have uncovered up to now. All, bar the one annoying one who sits at the back with their arms crossed tutting about having to be taught anything, will give of themselves.

Too often nostalgia is a tool we use to punish the present but I wonder if remembering what it was like for us when we started might help the new ones? Remembering the kind mentors and teachers being so much more inspirational than the cross or preoccupied ones? Remembering how brave and scared we were when we had to do something new? And remembering what helped us to nurse well.

Best of luck to all the new students and the mentors and teachers who will help them. It will be nothing if not an adventure.

Readers' comments (17)

Anonymous | 1-Oct-2010 5:27 pm
I think you will find that Adam and the Ants had their best year at the end of the 1970s and fell apart in the early 80s. Perhaps Duran Duran is more representative of the mid eighties but I stand to be corrected.
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Anonymous | 1-Oct-2010 5:29 pm
Broke up in 1982
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adam_and_the_Ants
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Anonymous | 2-Oct-2010 12:12 pm
Excellent article Mark, my day started with a heartfelt chuckle after reading it.
We are not all blessed with knowing which path in life to take from an early age as you say! (I still want to be a ballet dancer, but at 55 I feel my chances are dwindling)
I chose nursing in the 70s' instead of taking a place at Art College & today tell student nurses that I meet, that it's been the best decision of my life.
As my dear old Dad had wisely advised, ''in the Art world, you need to be very talented and or very lucky to succeed.
The world can survive without artists but people will always need nurses''
At my interview to get a place in nursing, I was very aware that I sounded like a Miss World contestant saying that I wanted to help people & travel. Yuk. I have done both and like to think that I still do help people, not in the Florence Nightingale sense, but 'make a difference' in my area of work in higher education. My travel ideas did come to fruition during my twenties, but then life events grounded me workwise & my travel is on the 191 bus route on a daily basis.
The diversity that nursing has to offer during study/training & after is an exciting world.The variety of students that have not had 'a calling' to the career is abundant, coming from all walks of life & corners of the world making the course even richer. I almost wish I was starting again , (but then I am too busy with my ballet lessons)! Good luck to one & all of you.
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Anonymous | 2-Oct-2010 6:59 pm
This made me chuckle and gave me food for thought. As the daughter, granddaughter and niece of nurses I grew up knowing the pitfalls but none of the joys so told anyone who asked 'Will you be a nurse like mum?' words to the effect 'Not if they paid me in gold pigs!' Then after training as an accountant in the NHS I got 'the call' and have never looked back. An unpromising rebellious questioning student has had a rewarding career at the coal face and is still there.
I have now been married to a nurse for almost 25 years and have 2 sons, neither of whom will join the profession, despite 1 of them certainly having the tribal memory of knowing what to do without knowing where the knowledge came from.
I wouldn't ever encourage anyone to join our ranks, they have to suck it and see, sometimes the most unlikely and unpromising students can blossom into swans
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Jacqueline de Laporte | 2-Oct-2010 8:16 pm
I remember at age 17 taking my driving test in Liverpool. The driving test centre then was next door to the 'Labour Exchange'. In the window was a poster say, "People Remember Nurses". I wondered then, in my mundane office job, if I would ever be remembered.

I started in the next 'set' at my local hospital. almost the youngest recruit. It so happened to be an SRN training school. If I had lived nearer to another nearby hospital I would have ended up an SEN. Such was my total ignorance of Nursing.

So like Mark, I ended up a Nurse by chance, no lifelong burning ambition or calling.

However, forty odd years later, I am still a Nurse and hope I still make a difference and patients remember me.
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Jacqueline Hickman | 3-Oct-2010 0:52 am
I joined our local Red Cross cadets aged 12 because I could not bear the thought of being a Girl Guide like my friends. Eventually this led to helping out at our local cottage hospital at weekends and I just drifted into nursing. I wonder what path I would have chosen had I been a Girl Guide? However, I obviously drifted in the right direction because I spent 47 happy ( mainly) years as a nurse, and remain on the register now that I have retired as I still do some ad hoc work for my previous employers.
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judith willis | 3-Oct-2010 1:55 am
I "grew up" wanting to be a nurse. And that is what I did.
Some 40 odd years later I am still at it. I love it and would not change anything.
It has been enjoyable, challenging, heart rending but oh so rewarding.
I have had a varied career going from clinical to teaching, back to clinical, into management and back to clinical. That is where I stayed until I retired. I found it the most rewarding and I am still "at it" cannot quite let go. So now do just a few hours a week in primary care.
I remember the posters, "people remember nurses". And they do...
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Anonymous | 3-Oct-2010 9:07 am
I enjoyed this, made me smile. I enrolled in school because I wanted to be an acupuncturist and thought if I were also a nurse it would give me more credibility. Am also a licensed massage therapist. I completed a vocational nurse's training (in US) with the thought that I would later finish the RN. Have sort of hit a wall though.. a few years out, have disliked every job so far. Kept thinking I would find a niche I liked, but mostly feel like a fish out of water. Most days I want to quit my job and enroll in culinary school (no, not joking :-).
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Anonymous | 3-Oct-2010 9:41 am
They asked me at my interview, in the early 80's "how will your mum manage to cook the evening meal when you are on shift work?" It was a strange question then and a stranger one looking back!

I have loved my job, wouldn't advise my children to do it, but if they did I wouldn't be disappointed.

People do remember nurses and nurses remember patients, there have been people who have stuck in my mind over the last 20+ years for their bravery, sadness, level of trauma, and definitely humour and a few for less positive reasons!

Good luck to todays students, we will need you in the future.
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Karen Alderson | 3-Oct-2010 12:21 pm
Good thoughts, coming to nursing later, I really have found my niche, work in the community, love my patients, love every day, my husband is a graphic designer, every day he asks, "how was your day?" - "fab, yours?" - "rotten"... money not great, but I'd never want another job!
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Jo Chalupka | 4-Oct-2010 7:01 am
Great article Mark, you always make me smile - thanks.
I wanted to be a nurse form the age of 14 after "helping" the District nurse who came to dress my mum's open wounds.
It changed my life and i've never thought of doing anything else.
My path through nursing has taken from theatres, to day surgery to cataract assessments and finally as a tranplant coordinator in Ophthalmology. I love my job and yes my patients remember me as well as me remembering them.
I feel blessed to be having a wonderful career, i might have got paid a bit more if i had chosen a different path but wouldn't have got so many wondereful memories and had so many laughs along the way.
That's the last 20+ years, bring on the next 20!!
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jane watkins | 5-Oct-2010 10:54 am
I too 'fell' into nursing and have stayed for the last 23 years (and was probably one of the bloody pests who sat at the back and made a nuisance of themselves in class) And again llike other colleagues who have commented here have met many patients who I salute for their bravery and (black) humour in dark times. Some I still talk to, who gave all of us who cared for them the ultimate accolade of having 'saved their lives'. I remember the 'mad , sad and bad' with the degree of affection that distance brings! And have got used to the idea that some folk think all we do is wipe bums and make beds all day - one day they will be at the sharp end of it all and realise their mistaken view of our job. I wouldn't change where I am now or where i have been before.
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Anonymous | 6-Oct-2010 8:49 am
Like judith willis i always wanted to be a nurse, though not in the field i am in , i always wanted to care for children. I qualified in mental health and care for the over 65's in the community ( what a big leap) but psychiatry was the only course i got on (my last choice) but hey i am loving it. though know for how much longer though i have another 30 year to go before i can think of retiring thanks to the changes in goverment it many be even another 40 years (i be about 76 then).....
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Ann Mills | 6-Oct-2010 9:19 am
I too drifted into nursing later in life after being a shop girl since leaving school. I wanted a change and took a job as a hospital domestic and catering assistant then became an auxillary nurse. After a few years I got seconded to nurse training and have been qualified for 3 and half years. If anyone had told me when I was younger (Im 45), that I would become a nurse I would have laughed in their face as I used to feel faint at the mention (let alone sight) of blood. When I am in the middle of a very stressful shift on the 72 hour assessment ward I wish I was back on the supermarket checkout but how could I go back to that now? surely I would die of boredom
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Anonymous | 6-Oct-2010 5:43 pm
I disagree with you Mark in that I think it does matter how we got here, into nursing, as I think that has a profound impact on how we are here in nursing. That may be from shallow beginnings, although I'm not sure I quite buy that, but how and if we open to growing when we start is crucial.
I came to nursing as a huge surprise to myself as having a mother who was a nurse and scary, old school, matron type, it was the last place I envisioned myself ending up. I hope I do it differently!
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susan | 7-Oct-2010 10:32 am
I actual think there is an important place for health humanities in nursing . I think we disreguard it at our peril as it promotes a bit of soul in nursing and keeps us in touch with the diversity of the human condition and issues both social and political.(poetry and literature in history often reflected the problems of the day.)
Science is crucial but on it's own and isolated from human relationships makes for automaton like behaviour , ie prescribing ,treating, carrying out orders unthinkingly, all powerful, anbitious but at serious risk of losing touch the with the human component and hub dub of life in general.
Of such overly science based societies are dictatorships created. Think of the screwy ideas of pseudo science , fascism and censorship and all the rest of that.
Dear me I've gone on a bit . I do think Mark makes a pretty good argument on the whole!
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Anonymous | 17-Dec-2010 3:51 am
ive just fallen apon this article and it made me chuckle, like many others here.

I too fell into nursing, I like the term scenic route. For me it was - prior to nursing I was pulling pints at the local irish theme bar on a 'year out' (more like, moved out of home to find my life and needed to work to pay the rent!). I knew then that i needed to find myself something worth while.
Fast forward to a advert in the local rag telling me i could train, have a vocation for life and I was going to get paid 360 quid a month for it!

Ive not looked back - 12 yrs into my career and now teaching undergrads and Graduate nurses in Australia.

Bonza
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