Because We Care

To all the selfless nurses and midwives who look after us….

A very happy Mother’s Day to one and all!

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Here are some inspirational Mother’s Day quotes we found just for you:

A mother is a person who seeing there are only four pieces of pie for five people, promptly announces she never did care for pie. ~Tenneva Jordan

Being a full-time mother is one of the highest salaried jobs… since the payment is pure love. ~Mildred B. Vermont

A suburban mother’s role is to deliver children obstetrically once, and by car forever after. ~Peter De Vries

Mothers hold their children’s hands for a short while, but their hearts forever. ~Author Unknown

The moment a child is born, the mother is also born. She never existed before. The woman existed, but the mother, never. A mother is something absolutely new. ~Rajneesh

All mothers are working mothers. ~Author Unknown

When you are a mother, you are never really alone in your thoughts. A mother always has to think twice, once for herself and once for her child. ~Sophia Loren, Women and Beauty

Mother – that was the bank where we deposited all our hurts and worries. ~T. DeWitt Talmage

A mother understands what a child does not say. ~Author Unknown

I remember my mother’s prayers and they have always followed me. They have clung to me all my life. ~Abraham Lincoln

A man loves his sweetheart the most, his wife the best, but his mother the longest. ~Irish Proverb

Biology is the least of what makes someone a mother. ~Oprah Winfrey

Children are a great comfort in your old age – and they help you reach it faster, too. ~Lionel Kauffman

A mother is the truest friend we have, when trials heavy and sudden, fall upon us; when adversity takes the place of prosperity; when friends who rejoice with us in our sunshine desert us; when trouble thickens around us, still will she cling to us, and endeavor by her kind precepts and counsels to dissipate the clouds of darkness, and cause peace to return to our hearts. ~Washington Irving

From the Nurse Uncut Team

Not even in my wildest dreams had I thought I’d be a nurse 3 years down the track. Although I respected the work nurses provided to the community, the stigma of being a male nurse was always at the back of my mind.

I was happy pursuing the career and dreams that I day-dreamed of when I first flew over the seas to Sydney 9 years ago. Unfortunately, it wasn’t nursing. Like any teenager, I wanted to be successful and rich.

At that time the obvious key to that world was Information Technology (IT). Struggling with the overseas lifestyle, I completed several IT courses only to find my dreams shattered gradually to the point where hopes had no room and the dark tunnel looked even darker.

Maybe that was depression which I failed to recognise then but I knew I had to make some changes in my life. I couldn’t run away from reality anymore or pretend everything was alright. I desperately needed a new beginning, a new career.

I ventured my options, my interests and passions:

• Pilot (my childhood dream)
• Astronomy (my all time fascination)
• Scientist (what I really believed in)
• Doctor

Still no Nursing in sight. Medicine was too expensive for an international student. Becoming a pilot, astronomy and scientist didn’t seem that feasible in my future (near future). My friend’s dad being involved in health care himself was the one who put the idea of nursing into my head.

Now, I can’t thank him enough. Thank you Mr. Thapa. For the first time I seriously thought about it:

“There is an enormous amount of science involved in nursing, the job diversity is infinite”

but seeing me as a researcher further down the track, was what pulled me right into it.

“I am going to accompany the lonely and needy ones”

“I am going to listen to they have to tell”

“I am going to make who is low and down, feel better; who is unwell get well”

“I am going to assure the frightened ones”

“I am going to install hope in people who has lost everything in life”

“I am going to save some lives today”.

That feeling with sheer determination is much more than humane and the joy it brings when you actually do save a life is out of this material world.

What more can you be more proud of? That is nursing to me, a portal to step into my spirituality.

Photo courtesy: www.saviourbehaviour.com/…/ascension1.html

Working in a children’s hospital you learn to develop an understanding of family centered care and how this can be applied to practice.

Family centerd care (FCC) encourages and enables family members to be involved in the planning, delivery and evaluation of their child’s carefamily centered care. FCC identifies the primary care giver as the most important person in the child’s life and also the only constant factor the child can relate to during the chaotic time of hospitalization.

Ineffective FCC can result from a break down in communication and the inability for the health care professional to commit to the process due to the acuity of patients and heavy patient loads.

Additionally, the establishment of FCC can be hindered due to a resistance by health care professionals, including nurse, to relinquish control of the patient care and enable the empowerment of the family to become actively involved.

Effective FCC has been demonstrated to diminish hospital length of stay, reduce anxiety for the child and their family, decrease infection risk for the patient as their parent or carer can provide care and increase patient advocacy.

Where I work, we view family centered care as an essential aspect of quality paediactric nursing care and aim to facilitate FCC at all stages of the child’s journey through our hospital services. We identify the child’s family as those people who are significant in the child life.

How do you define a family? Do you have experiences or opinions about utilizing family centered care in your work place?

Image source: simmbarb (via sxc.hu)

Father’s Day makes me think of the major influences in my life that have helped me to become the person I am today.

First we have my great Uncle David Hall who has only been gone for 2 years. David was always there for me when I was growing up. In fact when we first came to Australia, he used to translate what this little 4 year old Scottish girl (that was me!) was saying.

When I got married and had the kids, David became LITTLE POP.  Little Pop was always there for concerts,plays and walks. All of the kids had holidays and happy days down the coast. In the last few years, we would go down and take Pop away out for the day. We all have great memories of David that we will hold in our hearts forever.

The next lovely person is my father in law who I am pleased to say I still have a great relationship with. Vincent is a wonderful grandfather and is BIG POP to the kids. He is always there to help. Accepts all of the kids as individuals which I truly appreciate.

So I consider myself very lucky and always strive to be as honest and hard working as these two fantastic men in anything I do.

What about you? Who serves as your inspiration in life?

In honour of Father’s Day on Sunday, 6 September, Nurse Uncut is featuring each of our nurse bloggers’ thoughts on this special occasion.

The first one is from Richard:

I am the proud Dad of my two sons Oliver 11 and Baxter 6. I am not here to bore you with all that I find great about being a Dad but just to say that I love being a Dad. I treat it as a privilege and in my opinion it’s the biggest responsibility I have ever been given.

Hey, you don’t have to take my word for it… I am reading a book called “The Biology of Belief” by Bruce Lipton PhD and it says…

”Frontier science is confirming what mothers and enlightened fathers have known forever, that parents do matter, despite best-selling books that try and convince them otherwise. To quote Dr Thomas Verny, a pioneer in the field of prenatal and perinatal psychiatry:”Findings in the peer-reviewed literature over the course of decades establish, beyond any doubt, that parents have an overwhelming influence on the mental and physical attributes of the children they raise.” (Verny and Kelly 1981)”

While as nurses we may not all be parents we can still however try to make the kids in our care feel like they are special and that they are important. Never underestimate the positive influence you can make in a child’s day, even just a simple smile and a friendly hello.

While my late Dad and I have fairly different approaches to parenting, the principles underpinning them are basically the same, let your kids know and feel that they are loved.

My Dad was very much old school where kids were seen and not heard and hugs were few and far between. Probably not surprising as his father was a Headmaster of a boys’ school.

I will never forget the day I was feeling at my absolute lowest when I got my Higher School Certificate results and opened the envelope (no internet back then) only to discover that I had failed. My Dad came home after work that day (he was a Bank Manager) and instead of being angry or disappointed he just let me know that he loved me and that I would get through it. I got to know and appreciate my Dad on a whole new level that day and hey, I did get through it.

Have there been times in your life when your Dad has come through for you when you really needed him to? How has your Dad shaped you?

Rich

photo by Tolchik at www.photoxpress.com