In advertising there’s a thing called a ‘torture test’ where you take a product’s most important feature – it’s ‘unique selling proposition’ – and demonstrate it to the nth degree. SUVs drive up mountains, the Duracell bunny climbs sheer cliffs, and cleaning sprays spruce up a kitchen after a teenage boy has had his mates round for a massive bender.
I mention this up to explain why I learnt so much about life and work from co-authoring my latest book, What I Wish I Knew about Nursing. This wonderful profession is one big torture test. I reckon if we can’t learn something about how to work, live and love better from speaking to people who bring their heart and soul to their job – and face life or death decision every single day – then we’re just not trying.
There are so many lessons in this book that are applicable to all of us, but I’m going to put down the most obvious 5 of them over the next 3 weeks so you’ll hopefully gain as much admiration for these wonderful, big hearted people as I did.
1. Never lose your sense of humour
Nancy Fontaine, 45, Professor of Nursing, spent 18 years as an emergency nurse and remembers many occasions where she used humour to help her team. Like one time when she was in the middle of chest compressions, resuscitating a patient, when a man – who had earlier been admitted with a pear inserted where no one should ever insert a pear – entered the room, having removed the piece of fruit himself. The man interrupted proceedings and blurted out ‘What should I do with this?’ Nancy said ‘I looked up from my chest compressions and said, “Stuff it with sultanas, bake it in port and top it off with cream.” The team were in hysterics but we all continued resuscitating the patient while “Pear Man” was removed by security.
Nancy’s quote for What I Wish I Knew about Nursing is
It is vital to openly encourage teams to use humour to cope with tragedy and sadness. Humour is actually a very serious business which permits nursing to erode the archaic façade of professional detachment, forms deep bonds and creates a choreographed evasion of harrowing situations so that the focus is provision of life saving interventions for patients. I believe it must be celebrated as an acceptable and appropriate mechanism to cope and care simultaneously.
Coming back to the idea of a torture test, next time you can’t keep your sense of humour because the office fax has packed it in again, take two big deep breaths and say to yourself “Well, at least while I’m trying to fix this machine I know I won’t be hassled by an idiot who loves pears a little too much.”
What I Wish I Knew about Nursing is a book I co-authored with my wife, Allie, who is a Registered Nurse. (Of course when I say ‘co-authored’ I mean Allie thought of the idea, pitched it at Royal College of Nursing, Australia, got them on board, did all the interviews, and wrote the book. But I did proof read the whole thing twice. (Okay, ran spell check.)
It’s available from our website, and from the RCNA
