What does it mean to be a nurse? International Nurses Day

To mark International Nurses Day we asked the many researchers who are qualified nurses to answer these three questions:

1. What nursing means to you? And is there a different view of it if you’re originally from another country?
2. How you would encourage other nurses to progress and conduct research?
3. What are the challenges facing the future of nursing that you can see?

Here’s what they said.

Professor of Health Services Research and the lead for CLAHRC research into Fundamental Care in Hospital

Professor Peter Griffiths

I remember being asked in my interview for nursing why I wasn’t applying to be a doctor. There’s no simple answer to ‘what nursing is’ or ‘what it means to me’ but the answer I gave then is probably as close as I’ll ever get.

I’m not that interested in disease but I am interested in people. Nursing is about supporting and helping people, often through their most difficult times. While it’s hard to distinguish this from many other caring professions the key (to me) is that the focus is on the person comes first and the rest follows.

Why might nurses miss people’s ‘danger signs’ at night? – Dr Jo Hope

We know that nurses miss or delay taking patients’ vital signs (such as pulse, temperature and blood pressure) at night. Until now, no one knew why.

The NHS expects hospitals to use ‘Early Warning Scores’ to measure how ill someone is. These are based on the observation of ‘vital signs’ – measurements of things like pulse, temperature, blood pressure and breathing speed. The higher the score, the more often someone’s vital signs should be checked. This is so staff can spot the early danger signs of someone becoming very unwell, in time to help them.

Your local hospital will probably have an ‘early warning protocol’ that says how often people should be checked according to their early warning score. At higher levels observations will need to be done in the middle of the night. Despite this, we know that nurses are much less likely to do the observations that are expected to be done at night.

How to hold it together in times of crisis. Nursing calling – Dr Mari Carmen Portillo Associate Professor University of Southampton

Let me tell you a secret… I am proud of being a nurse but when I was 18 I wasn´t that sure. Finally, advised by friends and family I ended up starting the nursing degree at an excellent and powerful University in Spain…  so that was a fair trade for me… Ok… I will do nursing!

Like many other nurse students, at that time I faced several fundamental crises and I even thought of quitting nursing because I had never thought of myself as a nurse and sometimes others’ pain and disgrace gave me the chills.

The importance of the academic citizen in Health Services Research – Dr Gemma McKenna

It was palpable with research geekery excitement while travelling to Nottingham for the 2017 Health Services Research UK Conference. I needed this, I thought, an opportunity for positivity, to talk enthusiastically about how we as researchers can help sustain the future of the NHS and wider health services. The conference didn’t disappoint.

We are all too aware of the popular rhetoric that consumes newsfeeds and social media channels, with headlines like ‘The NHS is in Crisis’ and ‘too many people are pitching up to A&E’. All doom and gloom. The conference was a perfect antidote to this. While there are no panaceas to these ongoing issues, my fellow health services researchers offered positivity and direction against the troubling backdrop of public service austerity and Brexit uncertainty.

Prioritising the fundamentals of care with patients, professionals, carers and the public – Anya de Iongh

As PPI Champion for the Fundamentals of Care theme within NIHR CLAHRC Wessex, I’ve a great experience and opportunity to be an equal member of a team developing the research priorities for this area of work. Crucially, these weren’t priorities that we developed together in a closed room, but rather they were co-produced at several stages.

I want to go home: Can modelling the whole health care system reduce the number of patients waiting to leave hospital?

Dr Tom Monks puzzles the opportunities and pitfalls of modelling large parts of the health care system and how this might help patients waiting to leave hospital.

I work as a modeller for CLAHRC Wessex. In part that means I spend a lot of time speaking to health care professionals and commissioners about their priorities and teasing out if modelling could help.  More and more often I am asked “can we model the whole health care system?”.

Why we need to deal with the realities of Dementia in our hospitals – Dr Jackie Bridges Associate Professor, Older People’s and Dementia Care

Dr Jackie Bridges – Associate Professor, Older People’s and Dementia Care, Faculty of Heath Sciences at the University of Southampton

When people with dementia get admitted to hospital, their need for fundamental care can be high. Everyone coming in to hospital wants to be treated with respect and dignity by health care workers who have the time, resources and training needed to keep them safe and well cared for.  But having dementia can put people at higher risk of not having these needs met.

Research shows nurses are short on time not compassion – Jane Ball

Research shows nurses are short on time, not compassion

Jane Ball, University of Southampton

For the past 50 years, May 12 – Florence Nightingale’s birthday – has been celebrated around the world as “International Nurses Day”. But who exactly is celebrating nursing in 2015, when nurses appear to be under constant criticism and their morale is at an all-time low?

I want to be alone… single rooms and fundamental care – Professor Peter Griffiths, University of Southampton

Last month saw the publication by the NIHR of the final report on our study evaluating England’s first 100% single room hospital at Pembury, part of the Maidstone and Tunbridge wells trust, which opened in 2011 (1).

Can we discuss end of life care with patients with COPD?

Nuno Caixinha Tavares – Staff Nurse at Queen Alexandra Hospital
Clinical Academic Fellow in the University of Southampton
NIHR CLAHRC Wessex – Theme 1 – Integrated Respiratory Care

I’m Nuno Tavares, a staff nurse at Queen Alexandra Hospital and I’m also a PhD student carrying out research for NIHR CLAHRC Wessex and Portsmouth Hospitals NHS Trust. My research is about improving end of life care for patients with COPD.