Another Time And Beyond

 My Reflective Practice

Death! This is the concept that I need to come to grips within my kind of work. In fact I am sad when the leap of faith to save our residents’ life eventually changed into an eventful acceptance. When a resident’s time is running out all it takes at this stage is to give him the quality of comfort and dignity that he deserves. The goal is to give his life a beautiful ending in the eyes of his creator, friends and relatives.

Pondering upon the things that constitute our nursing practice I have realised that we all staff in general are giving our best efforts for our residents to be happy and comfortable in their remaining days.

Every nurse at T.O.P. will assess the resident against the ‘Gold Standards Framework’ ensuring that on a daily basis the palliative care that our particular resident needs are met. The difference or variance occurs from each individual resident’s choice and medical condition. The whole care is based on the resident’s individual care plans. A specific advance care plan is drawn that reflects  resident’s wishes on how he wants his care to continue and dealt with when his condition deteriorates and he will be no longer capable of making that future decision.  To deliver this care we reach out support from multidisciplinary team, e.g. Gp, palliative care team, etc. To a certain degree we honour relatives’ precious involvement as possible. Once the end of life care is established this will be handed down to all staff to ensure delivery and continuity. This is one of the examples of the clinical procedures that we do here at T.O.P. Our care home is operating vigorously according to the legal standards and policies as evidenced by its 3 star CQC award. The whole company’s philosophy and ethos of care, I can say are in place. But what I really want to highlight in this reflection is about the good attributes and values of staff delivering this exceptional care from behind those walls.   

On reflection the priceless thing that we do that makes us deliver excellent care to our residents are our amazing camaraderie, teamwork, and high regard for each other’s skills and heartfelt contributions no matter how small they are. In this home we all work as one and we all love and respect our residents. We connect and assume best interest from each other. By far one can expect an extra help when needed. It feels like we are family and our residents are our second parents.

Normally I have a difficult time accepting death with all the sadness it brings and represents plus the ghostly side of it but through the support of my colleagues and most importantly the wisdom of my residents I have gradually overcome my personal issues and fears. I must admit though that the ghostly side has not vanished at all.  

To witness death more often than normal is inevitable in this place but it is also here I have observed that death is imminent and more welcome. In truth it is our residents’ haven towards another time and beyond?

As one of the comments made by our resident during an intimate chat, “I am 99; I am ready to go and I thank you for my excellent care”. What a relief, being a nurse to hear these endearing words from a resident under my care has helped me in a way to move on and let go.

I wrote this article purposely for my reflective practice and because I have a blog I would like to share this with you all. I hope you’ll like it. Until next time...from me with love.

Where angels fear to tread...

I have been quiet for a while; so many things were happening, signs of a busy life? When one’s lifestyle is considered a success and ideal? My partner and I watched a film entitled, ‘The Joneses’. It is about a family who moved in a city suburb for the rich. The family is not real; they are created to sell a ‘lavish lifestyle’ literally from everything that they use – a range of top and expensive brands that they flaunt to create a model of a highly successful modern family. Judging from the disproportionate materialism and competitiveness that our world has become it is a ‘lifestyle’ that every family would probably like to afford. Don’t you think?

This is because our perception of ‘happiness’ has changed tremendously. It is pretty amazing how the power of these convincing adverts on how a ‘happy family would look like and behave’ can change our perspective of ‘true happiness’. One advert for example, showed how a mother is so pleased to know on the other end of the line from her son that he is going to get married. In reality would it be more endearing instead for the mother to hug him with joy if her son has managed to spell out the good news to her in person. In the olden days that is a memorable family meeting already with lots of foods, fun and love.  How many of us get out of our way and not depend on the modern gadgets to make up for togetherness for our family? Not a lot I expect, it is cool to offer very little of our time to our family now a days because we need to be somewhere else to afford them a lavish lifestyle. As parents or children we expect our family to understand us and sad enough it becomes an accepted norm in our society. Our generation will easily justify it now as ‘just one of those sacrifices’ that we have to make if we want to have an extraordinaire lifestyle. We feel justified to say ‘Honey, I am doing this for us’. We have lost the importance of ‘family togetherness’ and replace ‘real happiness’ to a false one.

In my opinion most of us are our own chosen victims because we allow the modern world to dominate us for a ‘big show’ that none of us can afford if not at the expense of our ‘dear families’. It would be nicer if we could say more often, ‘Honey, I love you and I am home!!!’

The title of my blog is inspired by one of my favourite idiomatic expressions, “Fools rush in where angels fear to tread.” Until next time... be well.