We are technicians. We work with our hands and our head with one single objective: our patient.
🕐 2:30 minutes
Head and Hands.
The hands, it’s the know-how that makes a nurse vital to the patient care process. This is what makes a nurse the interface between the doctor and the patient. This know-how is a combination of theoretical knowledge, personal experience and actual healing acumen.
The etiquette is what a nurse doesn’t learn at school; the human touch of a job which is constantly shaken by joyful, dramatic, absurd and personal situations.
The Challenge of Change: Meeting the Evolving Needs of Patients.
During my 22 years as a nurse I’ve seen the evolution of my mission: new technologies, new norms, and new patient behaviours.
The first big change here is the patients’ appetite for immediacy.
Today the acceptable level of pain for the patient is extremely low. Patients want to suffer less. They want the suffering to be short-lived. They’d like the healing to be like on TV: one diagnostic, a healing trick, and the pain is gone. We can adapt to that by listening more to the patients, by explaining more.
The second big change is about being challenged.
Today, patients question, challenge, and contest us. Self-diagnosis and self-care are wide spread behaviours as they have an easier access to information through sources that may not be accurate and that are not personalised.
And a personalised approach is the key. There is no standard care. Care is about customization, adaptation and tailor-made solutions. You won’t find that on a forum. The upside is that nurses have the right amount of charisma that enable us to be prescriptive when we are challenged.
The Private Nurse: A Profession of Resilience
While what it means to be a nurse has changed, there is one fixed rule: stay strong and be prepared to put up a mighty fight.
When I was a young aspiring nurse, we immediately dove into the world with no support, no help, no mentor and no experience. The shock was brutal and violent.
As nurses, what we find out is that we need to empathetically distance ourselves from patients.
The patients opens their hearts, their lives, their happiness or their fear. We’re not there to carry the cross, we’re there to explain to them how to hold it so it hurts less.
Retired private nurse, France
Jean Marie Boulenouar
Jean-Marie Boulenouar is a retired private nurse who has been on the roads for 22 years. He just published his first book, “Aventures et… Mes aventures d’un infirmier à domicile” -- funny, sweet and touching moments of his patients’ life.