Twitter has been alive with news and feedback from the RCN Congress for the past few days.
I can't think of another time in which there has been such mass communication about a nursing event, ever!
The advent of social media has transformed the way in which we relate to the world in which we live. So often now journalists are using Twitter to raise the profile of their stories to bring them into our consciousness. Moreover, accessing other Twitter users' messages to make sense of an evolving situation has also become commonplace.
So, the information coming out of the auditorium at the Arena and Convention Centre in Liverpool at this years congress has meant that I have felt very connected to the events as they occurred. Much of this has come from the 'force of twitter' that is Jenni Middleton, editor of the Nursing Times. Jenni's fingers must have been working almost non-stop!
Yesterday morning, as I was idly flicking through the tweets from Congress there suddenly came a veritable Tsunami of tweets about a student nurse named Molly Case, who had just read out a poem to the audience. Clearly, it had been well received as many tweeters had expressed great emotion as a result: "it made me cry" said one, "so proud to be a student nurse right now" claimed another.
To be honest, I have never been one for gushing sentimentality about nursing. That is not to say that I have been involved in desperately sad and emotional events as a nurse, but I have never been one for the whole poetic sentiment about nursing. For me, emotions are to be kept in check to remain professional and should not be allowed to flow uncontrollably.
A short while afterwards, thanks the RCN's live capture of the keynotes, a link to this poem started to circulate on twitter. I thought that I should take a look, just to see what all the fuss was about.
I was so moved by this, I was becoming quite emotional. By the time you get to the standing ovation, the hairs on the back of my neck stood up.
But this emotion, was also tinged with a certain amount of anger too. Because, in case you were wondering what Molly was referring to at about 2:40, when she talks about the 'Lip gloss-kissed women on daytime TV', she was responding to negative media coverage of nursing post-Francis. But more specifically she was pointing the finger at this:
This short piece on the ITV Loose Women show was just another public evisceration of student nurses for the delight of the daytime TV viewers.
Leaving aside the specific comments made by these Loose Women, the power in Molly's poem came out of the anger and indignation that was evoked from yet another personal attack on the inherent values of student nurses.
It's a hard time to be a student nurse. As a school leaver with the qualifications to go to university you can choose from a whole range of academic subjects and career options. Nursing has battled against this for many years now. The options available to young people (male and female) are much greater. And whilst nurses salaries are relative better than they once were, there are still many options that will ultimately be more lucrative. So, as I have said before, you have to really want to be a nurse to do a degree in it.
But, there still seems to be a lengthening queue of people waiting to accuse student nurses of not being "in it for the right reasons". And hence the anger.
The nursing profession is like a Pinata at a kids party: If you keep hitting it with a stick, eventually all of the goodies will drop out. And what you are left with is a beaten up old donkey.
Molly Case's poem was a polemic against this constant attack: "...we don't want the same tar-brush crushing our careers before they've even started" she pleads. And this is what made me feel so emotional.
When I was a student, nurses were still seen in an almost saintly light. Now, they have to prove their worth to everyone, including our own profession.
This anger has to be turned to a positive though, and raising awareness of just how great our students are is the responsibility of qualified nurses, educators, managers and leaders everywhere. We can't just rely on students to fight this alone, they need our support.
After all, student nurses are OUR legacy to the profession.
Andrew Sargent
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