Caring profession

Children have different interests and talents when born, hopefully refined when being brought up, the results of this being dependent upon their parents and their life time experiences up to that time. Some of them are brought up in an environment that encourages looking after animals or people in a caring capacity, they only being concerned with the health of their recipients and their welfare. In many cases their whole life is concentrated on being in a caring role in all its aspects, this not involving anything intellectual, but entirely practical. Nothing that involves the brain, but only a desire to be helpful. This is considered to be part of the nursing profession, rightly so.

The ‘powers that be’ have now decided that all nurses should get a University degree, and they will not be employed in that capacity unless they have one! What an absolute farce!

This has now put a barrier up to those who just wanted to care and look after people in need, because they may be either not prepared to work on a lot of theory which could be totally irrelevant to the job which is of fervent interest to them, or because they are incapable of learning the intellectual process meant to be relating to what they want to do. This is not to downgrade their inability to deal with the theory, but should be used to accentuate their expertise and desire to being more practical, and this is the route down which they should be encouraged to go. If this is to work, there should not be a block on their dreams by insisting that such a career needs a period of intellectual learning before being of any use. It’s a practical process and should be developed in an apprenticeship environment.

What will now undoubtedly develop will be many degree qualified nurses who will declare to being above the basic caring role, and being only interested in doing the least menial tasks, these being considered by them as the most intellectual challenging. This will result in the most important aspect of nursing, the caring role, to be understaffed, to the great detriment of the normal patient in their recovery period.

It is a great mistake to insist that all nurses should have a University degree. Society needs nurses who just want to be in a caring and loving role possibly receiving training in an apprenticeship.

In practice, you can’t teach someone to be caring and considerate if that is not their nature. They have to be born or to have developed such an attitude during their early existence on this planet.

A child has the right to be encouraged in an environment where caring is the main subject without insistence that a long period of intellectual study is necessary to be able to enter such a profession. A caring child has that right!