7. Two people who made me think.

Many people helped to turn me from a very green 18 yr old recruit into a qualified nurse via my SRN training course - at JG. But if I had to pick out a couple of nurses who were more influential than others and who particularly helped to shape my professional thinking and development I would have to name Mr Walker, one of the Nurse Tutors in my time and Stan Burroughs, an Assistant Matron (who was reponsible for the Care of the Elderly wards during this period).

So what made them so memorable and what 'extra' dimension did they add in shaping my development? Well both of them were successful ... in pushing me to think beyond the theoretical tuition that I was receiving at the time. How? Both of them used a "Yes ... but what if ... " approach to analysing care situations.

In a classroom session on intravenous rehydration I shall never forget Mr Walker taking us (as a group of studsents) further on, beyond the use of pre-packed "IV giving" equipment and commercially prepared IV solutions and challenging us to consider how we would physically produce a normal saline solution in a setting where ready-made equipment and solutions were not available. He challenged us, for example, to understand WHAT normal saline was and to become aware of how a sterile solution could be produced in an unconventional setting if it became necessary to produce such a solution for a patient as a matter of urgency in a non-hospital setting. I remember his challenging remark "You are being trained here as to function as a State Registered Nurse but you may not always find yourself working within the comfort of a safe NHS environment".

Similarly, but this time in a ward setting, I can remember Stan Burroughs, challenging me to consider ways in which nursing techniques and procedures could be safely adapted in order to achieve the desired goal AND simultaneously tweaked to make the whole process shorter and/or more comfortable for the patient. During nursing procedures, e.g. as in the passing of a naso-gastric tube or a urinary catheter I remember him deliberately making me think about whether there was "any way in which we could re-position the patient in order to achieve a quicker or smoother result" for the patient?

"Remember David", he used to say, "this patient is probably already feeling pretty awful or frightened or both and so what we need to aim to do is adapt our techniques where necessary in order to achieve a good result a bit more quickly". "And at the end of the day", he used to say, "the patient will 'thank you' for this extra bit of consideration".

So there you have a short account of two very professional nurses who inspired me to think that bit further and who helped me to think about meeting patients needs "beyond the basics".