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help us process the experience. I decided not to attend as I felt that my
role as sister may unwittingly inhibit the staff‘s discussions so I stayed out
on the ward responding to call bells and relatives‘ inquiries.
I guess I was feeling pretty pleased with myself for this supportive initiative
until a couple of days later I was to discover my ward receptionist had
broken down in the photocopy room because she was very upset about
Victor‘s death and had witnessed the distress of his parents. This was a
salutary lesson to remember: in future I would need to extend the
debriefing to every team member, not just the nurses.
The powerful emotional impact of this incident continued to haunt me
throughout my career prompting such reflective questions as: did I
manage this situation in the most effective way? Should I have stopped
Victor‘s mother from hurting herself? Was this a caring act? Did I act in a
professional way? Did I justify my actions to make myself feel better? Was
I a good enough ward manager? What kind of a role model was I? I tried
to talk all these questions through at home but found no-one really
understood how this experience had affected me. I still use this story about
Victor, in my teaching to show the need for embedding reflective inquiry
into everyday nursing practice and to enable nurses to explore and
develop effective interpersonal communication skills.
However, not all of nursing care is as dramatic as these two stories would
suggest. In fact much ward work becomes repetitive and routine often
encouraging the patient to be lost in the habitual nature of the work. As I
have shown in my story of John, it is very easy in the repetition of nursing
tasks to go onto ‗automatic pilot‘, to not consider specifically what we are
doing, and to make assumptions. In practice it is not uncommon to hear
―we‘ve always done it this way‖ suggesting potentially habitual and
thoughtless practice.
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