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
What a truely inspiring story pc
It’s funny how many never think about nursing and we just all end up being pulled into it….. like gravity really.
Migrant’s view I was born in Austria, and turned 8 just before hitting Australia. My mother had been a nurse in Austria, as was her sister. When my mother arrived, her English abilities precluded her from getting a job in nursing, so factories first for a few years, while she studied anatomy again in English. Then she tried again, but still not enough English, so she started as an ward assistant at Lidcombe Hospital, and eventually transferred to CSSD departments, working also at Royal Prince Alfred, and Parramatta Hospitals (pre-Westmead was built). My mother talked me into nursing, so, as I still get referred to at times s a ‘wog’ ( not an insult) I am a migrant.
Again, it’s disappointing that there is no name with the main article. Who wrote it? Why not put a name down?
A bit too spiritual for me, but everyone is different. When I started nursing, the deputy matron asked me why I wanted to be a nurse. I told her that the pay was better than the pilot cadetship I’d just started. I didn’t get one of these “Florence Nightingale visitations that would inspire me” effects!
I ended up as Nurse Unit manager of intensive care units in two hospitals, and still work as a critical care nurse, but now through agency. Nothing fazes me, or upsets me. Others ask how I can be so enthusiastic, cheerful, motivated, after over 30 years, and despite the increasing severity of case loads. I tell them every day is the same. There are 8 hours, or 10, or 12, and that during this time you work 150% or more. Never work less. While everywhere staff take braeks, cigarette breaks, or sit around when a moment arrives, I work, and work. On nights it’s rare that I sleep, and ofetn I ‘give’ my break to someone who is almost dead on their feet. The job gives me a constant energy charge. Every person in your care, or working with you, needs comfort, encouragement, reassurance that tomorrow may be better.
As I explained to one nurse, who was in tears from the heavy emotional workload of frequent deaths ( or pending ones) : If you are able to give a patient or other nurse, or relative, a half hour in their life, when you can reassure them, or make them feel better, through some small effort, word, deed, and even if you never see them again, then that half hour may make the difference between their survival or adjustment with the future.
I read that Ghandi said that his religion is the religion of kindness. I tell people that mine is the religion of cockroaches, and the lesson is to stop killing cockroaches and any other thing that is smaller or weaker than you. Anyone (especially from the clergy) who disputed this ended up with a great conversation which ended up with me proving even God was a cockroach.
I am NEVER tired at work, only at times while getting there, or getting away, as it’s then that the energy needs drop. Never treat nursing as a job – it is a vocation. Don’t worry about the lower money, but work how to get more ( do more hours, or join the NSWNA and fi
‘no name’ thingy Hi Bernhard — it’s the site’s limitation that doesn’t publish the name of the author of the blog post but when it’s published at the synopsis mode, you should be able to see the author.
finding out who the author is Hi again Bernhard….if you check this link: http://www.nurseuncut.com.au/7a2.page
you can see that at a summary version, you can see who the author of each blog post is
Hope this helps
I lived in the ‘garbage cans’ of Villawood Migrant Village for 6.5 years ( a long Time!), but later, during my nursing career, met a male nursing administrator, who was also there at the same time, but had actually lived there 12 years! – what a life, though as hard as it is to believe, there are people in the world who live entire lives in carboard box cities.
Life here then becomes quite nice.
As far as I am concerned, nursing is a headache, in fact I can’t believe how much it has changed my view of people. I used to dream of helping the world, then I became a nurse and saw how selfish and nasty people are, as a result I grew to hate people.