14. "Douce nuit, sainte nuit"

Tucked in amongst some of the many traditional English carols - at a Festival of Christmas Music that I attended yesterday evening - were some songs from other European countries.

They included "Rui, Rui, Chiu" (a Spanish carol), "Il est ne le divine enfant" (which was French) and "Nouve Grassenc"(a beautiful Provençal carol). Even though I didn't understand all the words that had been helpfully included on the carol sheet, nevertheless I was still able to enjoy the "sense" of what was being expressed.

Later on I found myself thinking about the many non-English speaking patients that must have passed through Joyce Green Hospital and all the bewilderment and confusion that they must have felt as they tried to grapple with the mixture of strange English words that colleagues must have tried to use to explain things to them or to ask them questions.

I certainly remember working as a Staff Nurse on the Accident Ward at West Hill Hospital when a French family were forced to gather around the bed of an unconscious 27 year old man who had been rendered unconscious in a road traffic accident on The Brent.

He had been married the day before the accident and he and his French wife had been on their way to London by car - for the main part of their honeymoon - when, after stopping for some cigarettes, he drove off on the 'wrong' side of the road. His young French-speaking wife was understandably distraught and then his French-speaking parents arrived later that night and - yes, you've guessed - none of the staff on duty spoke French ... and I remember feeling awful for them as they hovered over this unconscious husband/son, trying desperately hard to understand something of what was being said to them.

I'm sure that you too have probably felt the anguish of certain patients and/or their relatives as they have struggled to make sense of a language that is not their own and "felt" for them as they struggled. Yet as I listened to those 'foreign' carols in that 13th Century church yesterday I was slightly reassured to realise that the care and concern that we try to show to other people can still transcend human language barriers, albeit imperfectly.

And so, during the same carol service, as we stumbled over the German words of "Silent Night" in their "Stille Nacht" form I found myself being grateful on behalf of the many "overseas" patients who must have passed through the Joyce Green's doors, for the love and concern that so many staff must have endeavoured to show to "foreign" patients such as these.

Thus although our care of many of these patients was far from perfect I was nonetheless proud to feel that we had probably done our best in some difficult situations during the past.