The Language of Kindness

by Christie Watson

Sympathy, compassion, empathy: this is what history tells us makes a good nurse.

What I thought nursing involved when I started: chemistry, biology, physics, pharmacology and anatomy. And what I now know to be the truth of nursing: philosophy, psychology, art, ethics and politics. We will meet people on the way: patients, relatives and staff – people you may recognise already. Because we are all nursed at some point in our lives. We are all nurses.

Everyone has the right to a standard of living adequate for the health and well-being of himself and of his family, including food, clothing, housing and medical care. Article 25 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights

Nursing is a career that demands a chunk of your soul on a daily basis. The emotional energy needed to care for people at their most vulnerable is not limitless and there have been many days when, like most nurses, I have felt spent, devoid of any further capacity to give. I feel lucky that my family and friends are forgiving.

Kindness is the language which the deaf can hear and the blind can see. Mark Twain

Psychiatry is like a blind man in a dark room, looking for a black cat that isn’t really there. I think Oliver Sacks wrote that. Or a version of it. Insight can be a dangerous thing.’

Nothing in life is to be feared; it is only to be understood. Marie Curie

The unique function of the nurse is to assist the individual, sick or well, in the performance of those activities contributing to health or its recovery (or to peaceful death) that he would perform unaided if he had the necessary strength, will or knowledge.

The horror of our bodies – our humanity, our flesh and blood – is something nurses must bear, lest the patient think too deeply, remember the lack of dignity that makes us all vulnerable. It is our vulnerability that unites us. Promoting dignity in the face of illness is one of the best gifts a nurse can give. I am reminded of the very beginning of the Nursing & Midwifery Code of Professional Conduct, clause 1.1: nurses must ‘treat patients with kindness, respect and compassion’.

dignity is central to most religious beliefs, with the Protestant and Catholic Churches both citing that all human beings, created in the image of God, have dignity. In Islam the Prophet Muhammad is also reported to have said that Adam was created in God’s image. And human dignity, or kevod ha-beriyot, is also a central consideration of Judaism. Dignity and nobility are part of each human’s birthright. Dignity is political, too. The United Nations Universal Declaration of Human Rights states that ‘All human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights.’ Loss of respect for fellow human beings, and the removal of dignity, has in the past led to the dehumanisation at the heart of genocide.

Life is occupied in both perpetuating itself and in surpassing itself; if all it does is maintain itself, then living is only not dying. Simone de Beauvoir

We all understand that both nurses and doctors will learn good teamwork, not in a classroom, but by experiencing it; as Kant put it so well: ‘There can be no doubt that all our knowledge begins with experience.’

I keep my ideals, because in spite of everything I still believe that people are really good at heart. Anne Frank

Nursing saves me and my son from the trauma of adoption. We do not share the same blood, but we share the same bones: brittle, hard-edged and capable of healing. And, as with nursing, it is not me who saves him, but he who saves me, in the end. My hard edges soften. I feel everything intensely. He makes me a better person. A better parent. A better human.

Nursing is – or should be – an indiscriminate act of caring, compassion and empathy. It should be a reminder of our capacity to love one another. If the way we treat our most vulnerable is a measure of our society, then the act of nursing itself is a measure of our humanity. Yet it is the most undervalued of all the professions.

Anyone who works with cancer, however, understands and values nursing, perhaps knowing that it is not the cure – which so often is not possible – that matters in the end.

The true measure of any society can be found in how it treats its most vulnerable members. Mahatma Gandhi

Nursing is simpler than I thought. It doesn’t really need theorising. Nursing is helping someone who needs help.

Studies have shown that positive physical contact, such as hugs, are associated with measurable and meaningful attenuation of blood pressure and heart rates in adults.

There must be another life, here and now … This is too short, too broken. We know nothing, even about ourselves. Virginia Woolf

The best nurses treat each and every patient as if they are a relative or loved one. And caring for dying patients is the most creative aspect of nursing. The language of spirituality is a way of putting into words something we don’t understand. The rituals that we perform may be different from one family to the next, but it is in the act of having respect for these individualities that shared humanity is expressed. Nurses have to honour the spirituality of their patients, however it is expressed, sometimes forcibly suppressing their own beliefs.

Don’t ever underestimate the capacity of a human being who is determined to do something. Edna Adan Ismail