Every day topics have passed through my mind to be included as blog articles, but each evening I find that I am really not in the mood to write about whatever the idea was that morning. Even Dr Crippen is failing to get me worked up enough to respond, even when he posts an email from a nurse practitioner who seems as if she has swallowed a 2006 version of the jargonised phrase book of the NHS. Wait a minute maybe that is the reason, ok so I am passionate about nursing in the NHS, also keen for nurses to develop their skills but even I have my limits. I also wonder why we are all bothering. For the patients you cry!! Of course you are right but I don’t have any patients of my own these days and I left the bedside to make a difference to more people (including patients). I am finding though that managers are hated, and that even in my own PCT no one is particularly valued (might be wrong, check in after Tuesday to find out).

Each week I look at the Births / Deaths / Marriages section of the local paper. Well death section really as never yet have I found a birth or marriage of anyone known to me. Periodically an ex patient is mentioned, sometimes 2 and once even 3 (a bad week but as we know bad news goes in threes!). This week’s announcement of the death of one of my patients from five years ago when I last held a patient caseload has moved me more than I might have imagined. She was a lady who I knew through her Rheumatoid Arthritis (I was a specialist nurse in rheumatology) but whose illness paled into insignificance in relation to the death of one son from cancer and another to suicide. I spent more time than perhaps I should have considering the treatment for her rheumatoid but who needed people to listen to her story. A story of sadness, of lives unfulfilled, but also of hope as she had a daughter, son in law and grandchildren. Maybe that is the side of nursing I miss, the one where I find myself in a patients home and am drawn into their life. Thing is though, I am not sure too many people get to know their patients quite that well any more in terms of their physical illness or the emotional aspects of that illness and perhaps that is part of the problem. Healthcare, including nursing is becoming much more measurable, it is all about outcomes; good or bad. Listening to a patient’s problems is not necessarily a measurable outcome, but in my book it is something every nurse needs to be able to do. (Vi is the name my patient liked to be known as, this post is for her.