delivered like a parcel
A community nurse reminds us of the impact of our words, actions, and demeanour as we go about our work
We have no doubt you have heard the saying, ‘you may forget what a person said, but you never forget how they made you feel’. I remember the feeling when a colleague asked how I was, whilst walking away with her hand in the air before I had time to respond. Since that day, I’ve held it as a personal value to stop and show I care. To listen and be present. In so doing, we can give voice to the voiceless and make a huge difference in how people feel about themselves.
Healthcare is full of rhetoric about communication: skills of empathy and congruence, body language, and asking open questions, let alone our contribution to restoring personhood! A bottomless cup of compassion that fills up overnight, as if by magic. Demanding though it may be, however, I do feel a responsibility to colleagues and families to try to bring out the best in people by how I interact with them.
My work involves advocacy for those who are voiceless due to impaired cognition. Some say they have ‘lost their ability to function normally’, the stigma of which only adds to their voicelessness. What and who do I see when I look at that person? Do I see their cognitive decline or the person they once were? Do I focus on their fumbling words, or remember that they once received the MBE from the Queen?
In really ‘seeing’ the person, we may be able to respond in a way that helps restore their lost voice. Recently, a daughter said to me, ‘After a lengthy stay in hospital, Mum was delivered back to the care home in her wheelchair like a parcel, not seen by the receiving staff, not welcomed home, just delivered like a parcel being returned to where it belonged’. To feel unseen and unheard is to feel unloved and uncared for – this ought not to be so.
In the Bible, God equips us with words of help. Isaiah 50:4 states, ‘The Sovereign Lord has given me a well-instructed tongue, to know the word that sustains the weary’. Proverbs 16:24 echoes this: ‘Gracious words are a honeycomb, sweet to the soul and healing to the bones’. The life of Jesus calls us to care for one another, especially the broken-hearted. Jesus’ way of being truly present with people, seeing and hearing them, demonstrated this time and time again.
How do we feel when we take time to be present, to see and hear the person we are caring for, to use words to build them up? By listening and seeing them, we give them a voice. Feeling seen and heard is one of the greatest gifts we can give one another. A quote attributed to Mother Theresa sums this up perfectly when she says, ‘Kind words can be short and easy to speak – but their echoes are truly endless’. We have some role models to aspire after.
Written anonymously by a community nurse
