teaching compassion??

[nursesue]

there seems to be a lot in both the nursing press and the general press about teaching nurses compassion.  I am just curious as to what others think about this.Is it time to reconsider nurse training as a whole or just aspects and can you teach compassion?? ???

[wilfb]

I think that something has gone missing Sue. And if someone thinks that we need to teach 'compassion' then maybe an awful lot has gone missing.  I think that we may need to restart with the basics - lets re-define nursing and the title 'Nurse', and work from there. Perhaps that issue is being abused/misused to the extent that the press are reporting anyone working anywhere near a patient as a 'nurse' - which could lead to a lot of misunderstanding.

I can remember the joke about hospital painters being mistaken for doctors - maybe the joke has gone too far and everyone has become a 'Nurse'...

Or, and I am not personally sure this has not happened - nursing, whilst believing itself to have entered the upper reaches - has become 'dumbed-down' and we really have forgotten how to do it. I sincerely hope not....

There are numerous examples of neglect reported around hospitals and nursing homes and I wonder often which is the case.  Since I am no longer (being retired) a 'Registered Nurse' it doesn't seem to matter really - so why did it matter before? Perhaps the reason is that I do remember how easy it was for the profession to strip my qualifications (hard won and worn with pride) away on retirement.  Perhaps it says something about those who guard the gate - perhaps (with apologies) we no longer seem to matter, and that, in turn, is reflecting on standards of care, which are surely based upon compassion.

Surely anyone who doesn't know what compassion is should never be able to become a nurse - it is a basic raison de etre - with apologies for my French...

I think that we need to start again.

Or at least they were....

[Endoscopy]

I think that nursing, has become a victim of it's own misplaced need to be recognised as ''proper profession''.

Since the moment that nurse education moved from the wards, to the university lecture theatre, nursing has been doomed.There can be no substitute for hands on experience, working hand in glove with bedside nurses. Sadly, vocational nurses are a thing of the past, nurses no longer provide patient care, they write care plans, and from those, HCA's give the care. Many times my patients say to me '' I didn't think Sisters did these kind of things''. My answer is ''I'm old fashioned''.

I have two personal bylines.

There is no shortcut to experience, and the one from my heart. Nurses are born, not made. So no, I don't think compassion can be taught.

Let's hope that there's a way to turn the clock back. Nurses don't need a degree, they need vocation and compassion.


Dawn Riddell.