W czepku born, or Weronika Nawara – is the author of one of the most popular blogs about nurses and nurses. She tirelessly fights for the profession she has chosen and loved to finally be disenchanted. In an interview with Medonet, she talks about working in intensive care and what it is like to be a young nurse in Poland.
We remind you of the interview that appeared in Medonet in March 2020.
Aleksandra Lipiec, MedTvoiLokony: At what age did you start your adventure with nursing?
Weronika Nawara: I have been a nurse for three years, I was 22 when I started. It was after finishing my undergraduate studies. About 220 people started their studies with me, and 112 people remained after the first year. It is true that about 70 people dropped out of the exams, but 30-40 quit after seeing what the job really looks like.
Is it difficult to enter this profession?
You have to undergo three-year studies. For three years I had 5160 hours of classes. Half of it was practical training and work placements in hospitals, and the rest – lectures, exercises and laboratories. After the practical exam and the defense of the BA thesis, we get the right to practice. Then our first independent steps in the ward begin. I worked full-time and at the same time studied daily.
Older friends were in favor of it?
It required the involvement of the department and rearrangement of changes, but it worked. Things are different with older girlfriends. It all depends on the person, on his attitude towards young people in general. Already in college I heard comments: “girl, what are you doing, get away from this profession”, “why do you get into this”, “finish your studies and go abroad”, “in this profession you will not achieve anything” – it was very demotivating.
When you enter a profession with a head full of ideals, and someone says that this profession chews you up and spits you out, it cuts your wings.
But most of the nurses I have come across were very accommodating people, especially my introducing mother.
Introductory Mother?
Yes, something like this works in some departments. I was on the induction for three months with one person with whom I worked in one shift. She showed me what it all looks like, how to look after a patient, how to organize this care. It was actually the first apprenticeship.
Is young age a barrier or rather an ally in the work of a nurse?
It depends on what issue. I think that on the one hand it is a barrier because we don’t really have any professional experience yet. Book knowledge does not always translate into practice. Some skills are acquired over time. On the other hand, we have instilled ideals that really allow us to take care of the patient wholeheartedly, to look after him as if he were a member of our family. After that, you have to fight every day so that this approach does not change.
Are there departments where young nurses do not want to work?
Certainly yes, in every city there are branches with a very high staff turnover. When I was looking for a job, I too heard the opinions: “don’t go there because the atmosphere is tough”. Some units are concrete that will not crumbleDuring the first year of work, a man feels like an intruder among his girlfriends, only later somehow he buys into the company. But I think it is difficult in the beginning in any profession.
What troops have such a bad reputation?
Psychiatric wards may be reluctantly chosen because they are a slightly different field of nursing. Here we treat with words rather than strictly care activities. On the other hand, in infectious wards there is a very large sanitary regime and many procedures have to be followed. The very difficult environment I have entered is anesthesiology and intensive carebecause here everyone works under a lot of stress, at a very high pace, we take care of patients in a direct threat not only to health, but also life. Each of our actions must be quick and well-thought-out. We have to be sure of what we are doing. And at the very beginning, when we have no experience yet, it is difficult to bring out this confidence and react appropriately.
The most common ICU patient is…?
A person in a pharmacological coma. Care in intensive care is organized differently than in internal medicine departments, where patients are independent. In the ICU, we have to think about all the patient’s needs, even if they are conscious but in poor general condition.
Also read: Stories from the ICU. The anesthetist described them in a book
In such a ward, death comes face to face almost every day. Remember when you lost your first patient?
Yes, it was the first day of my apprenticeship, in the first year of my undergraduate studies. The patient I was taking care of that day died in the toilet. The first entrance to the hospital, the first encounter with the disease on the nurse-patient line and death immediately. But I don’t perceive this first death on my shift as any particular trauma. Later, there were others that affected me more. It all depends on what bond we have with the patient, how we fought for him and whether we expected death.
Which death do you remember the most?
Death of a girl who was two years younger than me and left our place for a long time. It was shortly after the publication of an interview with Rafał Gębura from “7 meters underground”. I remember her fiancé who was sitting by the bed. When I approached him, I introduced myself and said that I would take care of the patient, he told me: “that’s great, we know you because we watched the episode and read the blog”. The fact that they recognize me, trust me so much, and I know that it will not end positively, was terrible for me. I did my best, but it still didn’t help.
Patients often spend many weeks in hospital. Do they try to make friends with the staff, shorten the distance?
It is so often. It happens that patients stay in the ward for months. When they are awake, we treat them a bit like household members. We know their preferences and they know which nurse has what preferences. They know, for example, that when I’m on a shift, they will have a duvet folded into cubes. They try to shorten the distance, they try to call us by our first names, but I think that this distance should be kept and not allowed to be distracted, because it may turn out to be disadvantageous in the long run.
So make care more difficult?
Yes of course. You always have to be human in relationships, but if a patient tries to make friends with us, and then something unfavorable happens in his treatment, e.g. death occurs, we experience it like the loss of a loved one, not a patient. Such friendships destroy our professionalism.
Do you feel that you have already developed a defense mechanism?
He arises in me, but it does not always work. I think that even if I have 35 years of work experience, I will not be able to work out such a mechanism that nothing will move me. There will always be a situation that will take away the distance I have built up around it.
In the work of a nurse, various barriers are broken all the time. What tasks are the most difficult for you?
There are no more things that I would not do, but what I dislike most is accompanying the patient when he vomits. I have not broken this barrier yet and I think I will never break it. When vomiting occurs during resuscitation, it rejects me a lot.
How did you get used to being naked?
When I had to wash the patient for the first time, I had a moment’s hesitation, I didn’t know how to behave so as not to be awkward. Should I talk or not, look at the patient or not, make a joke or refrain from it? With time comes sophistication. Older patients have less problem with it, because often it is their next hospitalization and they are more used to nudity. Worse, when a young nurse comes to see a young boy who is conscious but unable to move. Then I always ask such a patient if he prefers an elderly friend or a nurse.
You can see that you do not lack empathy. This contradicts the well-established stereotype of an indifferent nurse who does not respond to the patient’s calls.
I think these stereotypes are largely created by the media. We have a lot of para-documentary series which show, for example, that the work of nurses is only about gossiping and solving personal problems of patients. The stereotype that has been created over the years that we sit and drink coffee is also a major success story. However, the truth is that during a shift, we often don’t even have time to sit down. We drink the coffee cold, on the fly. We eat one meal every 12 hours.
However, patients still talk about negative experiences …
Yes, because when something good happens to us, we rarely share it, and when something bad happens, we start patching the whole community, in this case the nurses. Negative emotions move us more. We don’t care if one nurse has treated us inappropriately, but the other one may be completely different. I do not explain my colleagues because I believe that treating a patient badly is very unprofessional.
We should treat everyone as if we were the first nurse she met on her way.
Do you think that young nurses have a chance to break down the stereotypes that clung to the older generation?
I also see behaviors that could be changed in young staff. Attributing all the evil to senior nurses is unfair, because the procedure does not depend on age or seniority. Aggression hurts me the most, regardless of the fact that the patient is in hospital-induced psychosis. I would like nurses to approach the patient with great understanding, look at him holistically, be aware that the person who comes to the hospital has been taken out of some environment, may have different habits and customs. Communication with the patient must be adapted to his condition.
You have never been overwhelmed by emotions, have you not been provoked?
Of course I was on my nerves more than once. I would like to teach other nurses by my example, but sometimes you just can’t. Once, I had a situation where a homeless man started calling me names, kicking, hitting me, spitting me. He broke away when his life was in danger, he had a lot of punctures. When a man stands by the bed for an hour, he explains and the patient doesn’t respect it, says “what do you know shit”, it’s hard not to take it personally.
Do you often encounter aggression at work?
Very often. Usually, it is not physical aggression, but verbal aggression, e.g. in the form of contempt, cursing. When stronger hand squeezes also occur, the patient has to be stopped.
After all, you still want to practice this profession. So positive experiences have an advantage over negative ones?
I think that how we perceive given moments depends only on us. I try to receive my work positively. I like her a lot and if I didn’t like her then I wouldn’t be a nurse at this point. I am happy about small things, for example that I enter the room and the patient says: “Oh, it’s nice that you are here”.
Do you think there is a future for nurses in Poland?
I think so. I fight for it all the time. I hope that our working conditions will improve and that more and more young people will choose nursing. Because if now, in the coming years, young people do not start to decide on this direction, our profession will be such a scarce commodity on the market that it will slowly start to die out.
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In 2019, Weronika Nawara published the book “W czepku born. About the invisible heroines of hospital corridors ”.
The editorial board recommends:
- “I saw severed heads, I collected severed legs.” Paramedic in an honest interview about his work
- “The patient’s grip was so strong that they pulled me with him.” Nurses speak out about aggression in hospitals
- Florence Nightingale – mother of nursing
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