letter to an overseas nurse

Georgie Coster models beautifully how we should welcome new colleagues who have trained overseas

‘You are so brave.’

I say it to relatives. I say it to patients. And I want you to hear me say it to you. You are so brave, overseas nurse.

I get clammy hands and butterflies ordering a drink in Mallorca, worried that the poco poco Español Duolingo gave me will let me down. Worst case scenario: I’ll look silly. You get clammy hands and butterflies ordering a unit of blood for a patient whose sinking haemoglobin is your heavy responsibility. Worst case scenario: Let’s not.

You’re so brave.

You walk into the staffroom. Silence. ‘Was it this quiet before or has everybody stopped talking as I walked in?’, you wonder. I see that on your face. But you pop your homemade biryani in the microwave and smile.

Because you’re so brave.

‘I don’t know if it’s the language barrier or she genuinely doesn’t know what she’s doing.’

‘She’s hard work.’

‘She’s just following me around.’
‘Do you know where the overseas nurse has gone?’

‘Which one?’

‘Binju or Bintu or whatever her name is…’

I imagine you taking refuge in the toilet. Taking deep breaths. Tears falling. Yearning for home sweet home. Where a warmer welcome would await you. Embrace you. Understand you. And tell you that you’re so brave for even going in the first place.

It seems we’ve forgotten, or maybe never known, that we bear the image of a God who welcomes us. A God who grafted us into his family when we were foreigners, cut off, without hope. A God who knows your real name, Bincy. And knows what it is to leave comfort to step into a foreign land. To be misunderstood, despised, and rejected. So that you can one day, finally, come home sweet home.

Accept one another, then, just as Christ accepted you, in order to bring praise to God.
(Romans 15:7)

Georgie Coster is a staff nurse in a midlands Critical Care Unit