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Dear Sir

When talking about nursing, the first days and the first steps in this profession are never forgotten and that might be because this wonderful job gives us the chance to take every single person we take care for as a new personal and professional challenge.

Now, I am going to tell you one of those experiences difficult to assimilate that shall live with us for the rest of our lives.

Even if we try to make the most of our time in order to learn, time goes by. Suddenly, I realized that it had been three years since I started studying nursing. I enrolled for the first year in 1993 and in 1996 I already had my diploma.

We cannot change the development of events and the next step consisted of doing the job I had been trained for and I really liked it so that I started working. At the beginning, I worked in one of the units that inspires us with fear, that is, Children's Oncology Unit.

While at university I did some studies concerning clinical medicine in Pediatric Units but it was because of the characteristics of the area where they were carried out that I had not had any previous encounter with children's oncology. Nor did I have any theoretical education on the issue because at that time I did not know anything about the "idiosyncrasy of patients in this unit". While signing the contract, I asked myself whether I would manage to deal with the new professional circumstances I had to face.

When I told my colleagues about my new posting they all gave a similar answer: "Pfff, what a difficult situation!"; "with children..." But there was no way back, I was a nurse and I was a professional as well so that, What could happen? It just happened what it was supposed to occur.

My incorporation to the new unit was good and my colleagues informed me about everything so that at the beginning it all went smoothly. As the time passed, I thought about the beginning and I concluded that providing excellent technical assistance had been my main concern. So that unconsciously I tried to avoid the reality of life I faced up because I was certain that a closer approach to it would hurt me.

During a period of time, I "standed on tiptoe" through the Unit and I do not think I was a bad nurse because of that, but now I know that I was "not a complete nurse". In everyday life we meet people who do whatever they can to avoid confronting difficult situations and it does not mean being better or worse, but maybe being incomplete.

While this story was taking place, I avoided situations that made me be in conflict and maybe it was because I did not want to see the humanity of the human being. I am talking about bidirectional humanity, that means the humanity of the patient and his family and also mine, as an individual. But I was fortunate enough because I met a person who made me think a lot and face life reality and even if it all had a great impact on me, after some time I recovered and I thought over it. As a result, my personal and professional strehght grew.

It seems as if it is happening right now. It was Sunday evening, it had been a quiet shift and it was 20:30 in the evening when a call informed us of a new admission. It was a girl that we are going to call Maria. She had a previous diagnosis of leukemia. She was admitted into hospital because she was feverish, she has a temperature of 101ºF. According to the Children's Oncology Service protocol, patients in such circumstances are admitted into hospital and are kept under observation when their temperature rises. Of course, that was a special situation.

Maria walked up because she flatly refused to use a wheelchair. She was accompanied by her mother and an orderly. I had never met her in the unit. Nevertheless, she had experience there (much more than me) and that was clear because our staff, other patients and their families greeted her.

I just did was I used to do when a patient is admitted to the unit, but suddenly I stopped to see Maria, who was crying and I looked down so as not to see the intense blue of her eyes and to avoid the reason of her crying. But I was unable to escape her eyes so I looked at her again and even without realizing I asked her "Why are you crying?" I thought I knew what I was going to be answered, that is why before hearing her answer I told her that she should be strong and that she should not cry because of being in hospital. I also told her she had friends, her mother was with her, we all were going to take care for her...

Maria stopped crying and stared at me, she said to me in a clear and serene voice: "You're right, but I'm not crying because of that, but because today is my brother's birthday and I am not able to go to the party that has been organized for him. Please, don't tell me I will be able to go next year because I don't know whether I will be dead or alive".

At that moment I wanted to disappear off the face of the earth. Even if Maria was weak, she was still really strong and that made me realize that medical care implies much more than just physical care. From a professional point of view, we should know about personal experiences in order to be aware of the effects they have on us. It is important to look at people we take care for having in mind the humanity of the human being because it is not possible to take care for a patient without understanding and it is necessary to know about all the parameters having to do with patients in order to be able to understand them.

Some time later, I read the following sentence in a book by JL Medina entitled La pedagogía del cuidado: saberes y prácticas en la formación universitaria en enfermería (Care pedagogy: knowledge and experience concerning nursing education at university): As a human science, the material object of nursing is the human being and its particular point of view (formal object) from where nursing tries to understand it is care.

What a true statement!. The author of the book perfectly explained what Maria had told me before and I understood something that distressed me, something that still worries me: the need for us to face the humanity of the human being concerning patients and professionals so as to become more complete nurses.
 

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