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They graduate from difficult studies and receive low salaries. They are frustrated when they are treated only as doctors’ assistants – after all, they do hard and often thankless work. Yet they love what they do. A 24-year-old blogger who is herself a nurse tells about the invisible heroines of hospital corridors in Poland. – You don’t have to work 15 years to see system pathologies. After two months you start to notice it – says Weronika Nawara, the author of the blog “W czepku born” in an interview with Karolina Gawlik.
- The book “W czepku born” by Weronika Nawara has just been published. It is a collection of stories of nurses from all over Poland, from various hospitals and departments.
- “You feel like drunk, you have to concentrate as much as possible not to make a mistake. You can’t work that much and you know it. You can hurt someone “
- Many nurses tell you how to eat or go to the toilet. “You promise the patient that you will adjust the pillow for him, but if you have the choice of stopping the bleeding for another, the decision is obvious.”
- “Not heard: it’s great that you are doing this course, it’s great that you became a ward, I keep my fingers crossed for your doctorate.” Rather you hear: Why are you doing this? Do you think you’ll be smarter? “
- Imagine that you are suddenly faced with 200 people sticking together and having one goal. We are a huge professional and electoral group. It is a great force.
- “I was shocked by the story of an instrumentalist who assisted in the collection of the organs of a mother who had just given birth to a child and did not have time to see him because she died in childbirth.”
Karolina Gawlik, Onet: Convince me to go to nursing.
Weronika Nawara: First of all, it’s a job that has a mission and you can make a difference. A job where you leave and you know you’ve done something really good, that is, they pay you for good deeds. Little, because little, but they pay. And you have a million prospects: if you prefer to sit behind a desk, you can work administratively, if you want to be healthy with children, then in a nursery, if you want to be sick with children, then in paediatrics. If you are a fast person, you can go to surgery, if other departments are more relaxed. If you are irritated by the smells, you can work in the clinic. When you enjoy scientific development, you go for a PhD, you teach others. But the most beautiful is definitely this mission. Maybe not a calling, but a mission.
Are you starting a revolution in nursing?
I don’t feel like the face of this revolution, but I hope that something good starts to happen. I can see it from the momentum my blog has gained, the interest in the book, how many publications about nurses are going to the market. Maybe all this will not start a revolution in the minds of nurses, but at least it will make the public aware of what an important profession it is. I hope someone from the ministry will read the book and wake up that the nurses have been forgotten for the last few years. I get a lot of messages from them.
What are they writing?
They hope that the book will reach people outside the medical community, that they see the same problems, that you can’t close your eyes to it, and it’s nice that someone talks about them out loud. But there are also people who accuse me of a short work experience and inexperience, because I speak extensively on a topic in which I have been sitting only recently.
I am not surprised, you are 24 years old.
First of all, when I started my blog, I did not know that it would have such an impact. It has happened and I have to bear it. Secondly, I am a sober-minded person and I try to talk about everything only from my own perspective, i.e. two years of experience working in a hospital. I am not commenting on what will happen in ten years. Third: I talk to a lot of nurses who have been in this profession for years, sometimes approaching retirement. I listen to their opinion. And fourth, you don’t have to work 15 years to see system pathologies. After just two months, you start to notice it.
Lack of solidarity, overwork, low wages – we know all these components of the pathological system. What’s the main problem?
It’s hard to say which is the main one, because they connect with each other. The biggest problem is that there are no nurses, so we’re overworked. And we are overworked because we are missing. Through decades of neglect and a poorly run system, we earn little, and since we earn little, we also work a lot, so we are overworked. And the circle is complete. We work so much, and we still get the logs under our feet. There is a lot of talk about the nurses being rebellious, shouting that they are the doctor’s helpers. It is not so. If you work so hard that you work three hundred hours a month and someone denies it, you refuse to do so. This adds to the general frustration, because if you had at least the satisfaction that you get good money for it and can count on respect, it would be easier to endure the hard work.
How long have you been working the longest in a row?
I never went from shift to shift, but in combination with studies and courses, the longest time I was on my feet was about 48 hours. But one of the characters in the book did indeed work two days in a row, with a two-hour nap. He described it like this, rightly so: “You feel like drunk, you have to concentrate as much as possible not to make a mistake. You can’t work that much and you know it. You can hurt someone, not just yourself. “
Since the situation is clear, why do you say the book might not change anything about the nurses themselves?
I’m afraid that when she writes about the fact that nurses like to dig holes under themselves, or love to prove to themselves that the other one is worse, no one will think that she could have created such a situation herself. This is not about blaming, I just want us to notice that we lack solidarity. It’s probably my biggest dream that we stand one for all, all for one.
Are you sure it would do something?
Imagine that you are suddenly faced with 200 people sticking together and having one goal. They can clearly define it, there are no distracting voices. We are a huge professional and electoral group! It is a great force. There are smaller social and professional groups in Poland that manage to fight for something, and we cannot agree with ourselves. It hurts me. I would like each of us to think if we would be the one who would follow all of us.
I admit that the stories about the lack of solidarity between you were the biggest surprise for me.
What hurts me the most is that when someone wants to develop, do something more, do something else, they are denied. His private life and appearance are commented on and some behavior is mentioned. You can’t hear: “it’s great that you are doing this course”, “it’s great that you became a ward”, “I keep my fingers crossed for your doctorate”. Rather, you hear, “Why are you doing this? Do you think you’ll be smarter? Nobody will pay you for it anyway. ” One of the protagonists, who experienced mobbing by other nurses and the ward, terminated the contract after two weeks. The other female friends sued the ward. They won, they got compensation, and that woman is still working, only in an administrative position.
At the same time, we hear about the fact that nurses are able to protest, often from different hospitals, even cities. They speak out loud what they are fighting for. How is what you do different?
My approach to nursing is more idealistic, but maybe that’s a plus? I don’t try to do it in a screaming way, I act slowly, calmly. I am writing about my feelings, my vision of nursing. People read it. When someone sees that the nurse does not have to be what they think, maybe they will come closer to our arguments, reflect on the problems. Perhaps, instead of strong solutions, it is better to show how important we are in the therapeutic team, what we do at all. Make people aware: without us, it will all fall. What will happen then?
Will it fall?
Sure, because we are actually with the patient all the time. It will also fall without doctors, because all these are cogs in one huge machine, we complement each other. The doctor will order a method of treatment, but all its implementation, administration of drugs, and observation of the patient’s reaction are a matter of nursing. It is our duty for the patient to recover as soon as possible, we must notice disturbing symptoms. So what if the doctor plans the treatment, if no one will do it? One of my protagonists claims that the competences of a nurse cannot be explained to the “average Kowalski”, because even family and friends do not realize what and how much we do every day.
Do you think so too?
When, after getting my bachelor’s degree, I wanted to brag to everyone that I was a nurse, I noticed that for people it is not a prestigious profession. Once an acquaintance from my year, who studied engineering, asked: “What are you doing that a doctor won’t do?” I replied: “What does a doctor do that I couldn’t do?” But why bother? We just do two different jobs. But it is a question of how nurses have been received before and it is not one that can be worked on with a few interviews. One of the nurses in the book says that he always introduces himself to the patient so that he does not think that the doctor is with him 24 hours a day.
Is the nursing profession more appreciated in other countries? I don’t mean the money.
In the West, nurses conduct private practices, that is, they deal with what the WHO has proposed, which is the protection and maintenance of health. In Poland, we pay too little attention to patient education and to the role played by the nurse. We have a lot of subjects related to education and didactics, but what if we cannot apply them in practice, because this is the system.
It’s hard to talk about patient protection, since your characters say that even in the hospital they don’t have time to approach a patient for several hours.
Like the slogan in one campaign: “Night – she’s one, thirty of them.” Thirty patients, of course. It is terrible that there are so few of us and we are not able to take care of them. We bend over backwards to do it because we know how important it is. But really, sometimes, despite our best efforts, we have to make a choice. Then the patient complains that he asked for water all night and no one approached him. Why didn’t he do this? Because there was resuscitation on the next bed, someone else was in a life-threatening condition, and yet another hemorrhage. The nurse must have been there, but the patient doesn’t see it. He is not surprised that he is irritated because he gets sick, so he thinks about himself at that moment. I myself am irritated that I cannot come to him, even though I have him in the back of my head. You promise the patient that he will drink, you can straighten his pillow, but if you have the choice to stop the bleeding, the decision is obvious.
Any overwork story of a nurse touched you the most?
I picked them up personally, because I know what it is like when there is so much work that you forget about yourself and your own needs. Many nurses talked about not having time to eat or go to the toilet. One nurse recalled asking the doctor to prescribe an antibiotic because there was no one to replace him when he was sick.
The nurse also tells that she has heard everything about her friends from patients – that they take bribes, rob patients, throw drips into the trash, do not administer drugs.
I know that we are often treated unfairly by patients, but even when I am nervous, I immediately think that he is a sick person and I am here to help him. If he ever gets an unpleasant answer, I’m not surprised that he gets irritated. I also write about this in my book. The most extreme story was one in which two attendants were sitting next to the body of a woman, smoking a cigarette. They talked and gossiped to each other.
Please write this: I apologize to all patients for the nurses who said something offensive or harmful to the patient. I apologize to my grandfather for a colleague who asked why he was surprised that he was not feeling well, since he is 80 years old. She also told him that his family had no interest in him and that he was dirty, whereas I had taken him in the shower the day before. Such a comment should not be made at all. He was so pained that I had tears in my eyes. I know we don’t have to be angels, we are only human, but really, at least a little forbearing. Let us put ourselves in the position of a granddaughter who comes to her grandfather and hears such a text.
You also hear insults from patients yourself.
Sure it does. How many times after waking the patient, I heard curses, that doesn’t count. However, you receive insults differently at your address, if you know that it is a matter of drugs, anesthesia. The patient says so, because at this point he has anxiety, fear of something, he does not really know what is happening. Sometimes we hear worse things from our families and our patients protect us! But they are also not surprised, families can be powerless in the face of the situation. I have a soft spot for people, especially the sick and my relatives. I know that most often they are not angry, they are only afraid, sometimes they do not know something, even though doctors and nurses try to inform them. Information for the family is simply medical facts, we already have a series of events and effects in our head. A thousand questions appear in the minds of relatives, checking the Internet.
They read on the internet that nurses only drink coffee?
Families enter the patient room, see us sitting over medical records. They do not see that even half an hour earlier each of us had the “turbo” mode turned on so that the patients would lie beautifully, the dressings were clean and aesthetic. We do it precisely to enable families to spend time in peace with their loved ones. We sit down for a moment, and in front of us there is a pile of papers to be filled. This is what “free time” is. Yes, then I drink coffee. They are cold most often. Sometimes it is possible to finish one cup during the whole shift.
Are you talking about all this and you seriously think that it will encourage someone to go to nursing?
I think that if someone wants to become a nurse or a nurse, I will still motivate him, because he will want to deal with it. If anyone thinks about this profession at all, it means that social communication and the media have not discouraged him so far, so my book will not do it any more.
And there is something to face in this profession from the beginning. You were 19 when the patient first died.
And it was the patient with whom I spent every possible moment in the ward, I visited her much more often than others. I was holding my hand at the time of the panic attack. I heard about my grandchildren and how he wouldn’t have time to see them go to school. I returned to the ward after the weekend. I asked if I could deal with this room any longer, because I wanted to spend some more time with it. “She died yesterday,” I heard. I got an emotional leaf with these words.
Each of the patients influences you in some way, and did any of the characters in the book have a similar influence on you?
The nurse working in the military influenced me the most. I would like to change places with her one day, she impresses me a lot. It is very positive, thanks to which I had the impression that our views were the closest. She has such a great affection for people as I do, but she has kept it after 30 years of work! After the helicopter in which she was flying was fired on, after how much suffering she saw, how many soldiers were killed in the war.
Was there a story after which you felt you couldn’t take it anymore?
I was shocked by the story of an instrumentalist who assisted in the collection of the organs of a mother who had just given birth to a child and did not manage to see him because she died during childbirth. I would like to experience it, to know how I will behave in such a situation. It may sound a bit psychopathic, but I knew from the beginning that it would not be easy in this job and I went to the intensive care unit on purpose. I knew that I would experience such situations and emotions there, that I would toughen up and check. What you read in a study book, that when someone’s son dies, you can come up and put your hand down, offer hot tea … Sorry, but it doesn’t work that way in everyday life. This is where what is sincere and authentic comes from me.
They probably don’t write about the “magical” aspects of this work in their college books.
Are you talking about superstitions? Indeed, a dozen or so people told me that when a fly flies through the ward, it portends death. Or that the body of a deceased person becomes lighter when the nurse is unable to deal with it and asks for help. It is also said that sometimes death passes through the ward and takes patients in a wave. Once, I heard a story that a nurse entered the room and turned on the light because it touched her, that something might be wrong and indeed one of the patients was already dead. In long-term care, on the other hand, I heard that one patient with poor communication became intolerable and suffered panic attacks when someone in the ward died.
You’re not burned out yet, but you must have had enough sometime.
I was two months old that I was going to work and I felt that what I was doing was pointless. There was always something wrong with the patients. You try hard, put so much heart into it, and it doesn’t work out anyway. But I said to myself: hello hello, you’re doing everything you can, some things you won’t win, some are inevitable. You won’t win with death.
What does it all reward?
Every patient who wakes up, leaves the hospital, recovers. These are successes that blur the worse moments that sit inside us. Recently, I had a situation where a patient whom I looked after many times wrote me a comment on the blog: “Thank you for such angels.” Amazingly, he remembered me. And I, of course, his.
How does this affect private life?
Anyone who works in the medical profession has a hard time in their private life. Because working with a patient, if you don’t set a limit, is like a jealous lover who wants more and more from you. There is a lot of divorce. Some things are hard to understand for an outsider. My husband always listens to me, but I realize that he will never know what these feelings are. Recently, I told him that he is the only person in my company who is healthy. I am either with the sick or with the people who look after the sick. However, I notice that more often than mental fatigue, we suffer from physical fatigue. For 12 hours you are all the time for someone else’s needs and are not able to take care of yourself. One of the protagonists laughs, a bit through tears, that her patients are better moisturized than she is, because she smears them with balm at least four times a day, and she doesn’t remember the last time I had time for myself.
Before the premiere, an excerpt from the book was available on the internet about the disgusting things in the nursing profession: bedsores, inhalation catheterization, deviant comments. Someone was there indignant that you described it?
There were, but I believe all these stories are true and we cannot hide them. It is just like that, and each of us has encountered it, why deny it. Each of us measures ourselves with something. I write directly that I have a weakness for vomiting, I needed time to get used to it.
Does this profession change?
Certainly, but which way depends on us and on the happiness of families, patients, doctors, nurses. This profession changed me so much that I became less selfish. When I left high school, I was a star who dreamed of singing and a music academy, I decided to go to nursing and learned a lot of humility. When you are humble, you notice much more because you also listen more. I often see that the mere conversation and presence help the patient, but at the same time I have learned to set limits, because there are also people who try to use such kindness. The blog has changed me too – in the sense that you can’t be so concerned about other people’s opinions. Once upon a time, negative comments hurt me a lot. Today I know that it makes no sense, because it’s important that I want to change something and I don’t do it for myself. I want us to be noticed and show the society through our behavior that we are educated, professional and, above all, solidarity.
What will you suggest if someone from the health ministry meets you?
First, the campaign. But a decent one, not like she once appeared, with a young, well-groomed woman sitting there and seeing a dirty diaper, she says that she wouldn’t take it for any money. And the overworked, older, less well-groomed nurse sits like an orphan and sighs: “For none …”. The nurses were outraged, we were hit on the cheek with this campaign. Secondly, I would like to increase the role of the nurse in health education. Points where they can give advice and receive specific money should be developed. Thirdly: I think that a nursing benefits package should be made, that is, every procedure paid by the National Health Fund should be priced. Every medical procedure is priced, but nurses are not.
How will you handle the role of this media nurse?
I feel that it is loud now, because the book, interviews, and in a moment I will become the nurse who once did it all.
Then the whole goal of the project “In the bonnet of the born” does not make sense.
I know, therefore, despite my fears, I sincerely believe in the real effect of my actions. My only fear is that as a young person, I will not be taken seriously. But it is the young people who are fighting for what their professional life will look like in the future. Nobody will do it for us. Criticism is sad, but it motivates you to be even better.
When will you feel the first effects of this non-hospital work?
If I see the statistics that in 2020 there is a much higher percentage of people willing to study nursing, then I will be very happy.