A most noble profession

The nursing profession has always interested me, starting from when I was about seven, during World War II, and one of my aunts was a St John nurse at Bugeja Hospital. Later, I studied about the Knights Hospitaller and eventually talked a lot about them with the many visitors from overseas I guided around Malta.

But my respect and admiration for the profession increased enormously when I spent almost eight months of my life, over five stays, in three different hospitals: in Sliema, London and Guardamangia, being cared for by nurses of all sorts and nationalities, and fully realising how very valuable and necessary their work is.

While in no way wishing to lessen the importance of doctors and surgeons, one has to admit that once they do their work, give instructions and leave, even if they visit every day, it is the nurses who take care of patients for the rest of the day; follow instructions, give medication, use any high-tech apparatus that is needed, attend to basic needs (bathing, bed pans, vomit bowls), try to make patients as comfortable as possible, stay with us when we need them most, and even lend a sympathetic ear and stop for a little friendly chat.

The government launched a publicity campaign to encourage young people to take up nursing. This little piece is my contribution to this campaign. It comes from the pen and heart of someone who has been nursed back to health from near death, who really knows what nursing is and who remains forever grateful to the Lord for providing such good nurses (and doctors and surgeons).

This is not the first time I am writing to encourage young people to seriously consider taking up nursing as a career. But, in the present circumstances, I feel I should do so again.

My appeal is meant not only for young women but also for young men - some of the best nurses I have known were men. Remember, sick people - and the elderly - need you badly. And I just cannot think of a more meaningful, caring profession, of anything so satisfying, so infinitely better than working with computers or any other machines, as nursing a sick person back to health or at least doing one's best to make a patient's last days more bearable. I have always believed so and I became even more convinced of this when I saw the genuine happiness on the face of the nurses who had nursed me back to health as I was leaving Capua Palace and King's College Hospitals.

Nursing is definitely not a demeaning profession. Think of our Hospitaller Knights, ministering to "our (their) Lords, the sick" at the Sacred Infirmary. Think of royal and noble ladies tending to the wounded in wars or the injured in national disasters. Think of ladies and gentlemen accompanying sick pilgrims to Lourdes. Think of Mother Teresa seeing Christ in every sick or old person...

Nursing is said to be a vocation. I believe that vocations have to be nurtured, that they require fertile soil. And that this is best found in families. Parents (and grandparents and even old aunts and uncles) should see that children are brought up in a caring atmosphere, educated "in human and Christian values", to quote the bishop of Gozo in a recent speech. Schools, meaning teachers, could and should do a lot to help. But also society in general, including the media.

In this respect the recent editorial Publicity Drives Not Enough To Attract Nurses and the feature Nursing A Fulfilling Career were most important. In the latter I was glad to see the nurses' lecturer's advice that nursing is not for the uncaring, because I have met some bad nurses too.

Lastly, the Church too can and should help. Incidentally, how many priests have encouraged young people to take up nursing, telling them how ennobling it is, in their Sunday homilies, since this campaign was launched?