How much do we value our Nurses?

Last week, I valued every spare moment I had. Among many other things I was decorating our bedroom, a process that through the lack of time, was becoming rather drawn out. I had promised J we would have a new bedroom by Christmas. We had bought a new bed, wardrobes, dressing table and so on, all stored in another bedroom waiting for our bedroom to be decorated! So there was no escape. Over the last few weeks, I have stripped wallpaper, filled cracks, painted walls, wallpapered and had the floorboards sanded and renovated, and I’ve now been able to varnish them. All in all it has been a successful transformation. However, if you had been in our house last Wednesday, you might not have thought so. I had jumped out of bed, seen J off to work, and had spent a couple of hours sanding down the walls. I was covered in dust, and my hair was like straw.

No worries I thought, a quick shower and I would be ready for my mid-morning Teams meeting. I hadn’t bargained on United Utilities turning the water off so they could mend a leak. They did send me a text to say they were working on fixing the leak and they were going as fast as possible. No water, no shower so there I was thinking I might have to pretend my camera wasn’t working at my meeting. I needn’t have worried as Telenet, fixing new cables outside on the street, also then managed to cut off my internet supply. Yes, it was turning into one of those days.

Most of us take for granted those things we always think will be there day in and day out. We turn on the tap and expect water to flow, every time. Increasingly we take for granted that our technology will work each and every time. There are many things we fail to realise the true value of until they are missing from our lives. That is when we realise how important something is. But it is not just tangible things like water and technology that we might value. Other less tangible things can be valued too.

It takes noise to value silence, sadness to value happiness, and absence to value presence. We might never actually know the value of a moment until that moment becomes a memory. Likewise, we might not know the value of someone until we see the gap they leave behind when they are no longer part of our lives. I think this will have been something many folk will have experienced during the last 20 months of the pandemic.  

If I had valued my time a little more, I might have got in a decorator, paid the bill and moved back into our bedroom a lot sooner. However, as well as time, there was something else I valued, the satisfaction of doing all the work myself, even when, as in the wallpapering, it was something I had never done before. Values, themselves, can shape the way we live our lives. Many healthcare organisations will publish a set of values on their website, but I do sometimes wonder how many people, both collectively and individually, actually live those by those values.

Last week, I was very pleased to see someone, who believed in the value of something, actually taking some action. Dawn Butler, a Labour MP, spoke to her amendment to the Health and Social Care Bill currently going through parliament. It was aimed at protecting the nurse title in UK law. She wanted the law changed so that no one is able to ‘practice’ or ‘carry out business’ under the nurse title unless registered with the Nurse and Midwifery Council (NMC). Sadly, the amendment was not passed, MPs voted 304 to 240 against the motion. With so much professional and public support, it is hard to understand why.

Edward Argar, a Conservative Minister for Health, claimed that the amendment was flawed and didn’t address some fundamental challenges, such as the title ‘nurse’ being used by other professionals working in other areas, such as dental nurse, or veterinary nurse. To my mind this a rather spurious argument to make. Readers of this blog will, I’m sure, remember the case of Ian Levey, one of the new Conservative MPs of 2019, claiming to be a nurse during his election campaign, when in fact he was a healthcare assistant. There have been many others who have traded on the title ‘nurse’ for their own gain. In so doing, they undermine the trust the wider public has of what ‘being a nurse’ implies in terms of safety, qualifications and knowledge.

Although I’m no longer practising as a registered nurse, I am proud to be a nurse still. It is a part of my life that I value highly. I still retain the knowledge I gained as a nurse, and might still know what to do in certain healthcare-related situations. What I wouldn’t do is use such knowledge and skills while claiming to be a nurse. Likewise, when I take my dog to the vets and the receptionist says, ‘the nurse will see you now’, I don’t think I’m in the presence of someone who might be qualified to meet my health needs.    

I hope that Edward Argar’s public promise to keep the intent of the amendment under review holds true. Valuing our nurses goes beyond rainbows and clapping. The title should be protected in law, and I’m sure that those campaigning to make sure it is will continue to fight until it is.