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have had a sympathetic registrar to help me, at least partially, process this
experience. I was also lucky to be working at a time when litigation and
mass media coverage were rare. Nurses were still seen as angels. Unions
went on strike on the nurses‘ behalf. At the same time, I worked in
environments where the tacit message from senior staff was that one‘s
own needs didn‘t matter, the patient‘s needs were to come first, and we
had to be strong. A show of emotion tended to be viewed as a weakness.
Professional nurses did not let the pain and sufferings of others affect
them; they just got on with the job.
However, from my experience with John, I learnt to question more, to
identify the gaps in my knowledge base, to read around conditions I was
unfamiliar with and not follow rules blindly. I always wanted to know why I
was being asked to do something rather than accept the word of another
nurse or medic. Nevertheless, while there were no repercussions
personally, in the sense I was not held accountable for John‘s cardiac
arrest and death, I carried with me the emotional cost of that experience. I
think this experience subsequently allowed me to notice and question the
unintended consequences of cultures that support the implicit denial of the
emotional experiences of nursing, although these insights were to come
much later when I was teaching and away from the bedside.
Eventually, I was to explore through my master‘s research, nurses‘ stories
of providing emotional support to patients and relatives and I was to value
the theory of emotional labour and its impact which continues to influence
my thinking (Hochschild 1983, Smith 1991). I was also influenced by
Menzies-Lyth‘s (1960, 1970) seminal work on the functioning of social
systems against anxiety. She observed nursing structures and processes
were used to avoid feeling the tension, distress and anxiety generated by
both the simplicity of many tasks and the complexity of nursing ill and
dying patients.
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