nursing and caring
At the outset, let me assure you that I am not your head nurse or your nurse in-charge and neither is this another class in nursing which you have happily and, I should add, even gladly graduated from several years ago. But I would like to ask permission if you could allow me some unsolicited advice.
Frankly I could not help it but if you don’t like what I am about to say don’t blame me. Blame rather the gospel today which speaks about the fever of Peter’s mother in law and the many people in need of care and healing. I have never heard of dengue fever in the Middle East although the carrier, the aedes aegypti, is named after a nation in that area. Nevertheless it is told that she is sick and needs immediate care and attention. The disciples pleaded to Jesus asking him to heal her. And Jesus, it is told, stood over her and rebuked the fever, and miraculously, the fever left her.
You are nurses and like Jesus you are called to help people recover from their ailments and diseases. Unlike Jesus however, you do not do it by simply rebuking the fever and driving them out by word alone. You cannot imitate him I believe in his miracles. You are not miracle workers. However, you have one capacity that you can emulate from Jesus - to care for the sick with a caring heart like Jesus. You may not heal them like Jesus, but you can care like Jesus. And this is what is most important.
I know that this is hard work. It is not easy to care even if you get paid for it. Caring does not come naturally and automatically in a person. It is something that you gather deep down from the pit of your stomach forcing it to come out of you. I said it is not easy especially if your patients are irritable and unloving in return. Caring, to be caring, needs all the strength of the will to come out. And this too is the experience of Jesus. That is why Jesus, after all those healing, and driving diseases and caring for the sick, had to look for a deserted place where he can be alone to rest and to pray. Caring as I said does not come out naturally. It needs the strength of the will.
Today you come to the end of your volunteer work in one of the busiest hospital in the island of Panay. You have known firsthand the suffering and the difficulties of sick and their families. You have come face to face with people in their most vulnerable situation when all courtesy and decency are sometimes shed. It was not easy. It will never be easy. But that is a fact we have to accept, the fact which makes caring difficult and at the same time challenging.
Do not be content with just being nurses. The challenge is to make yourselves caring nurses, nurses who care, nurses who can sympathize, nurses who can understand the predicament of a human being when it is most vulnerable and insecure. Remember that you are not just nurses. For some people you are their hope ,sometimes the only hope to bring them back to health. Remember, you may not heal but you can always care and that spells at lot of difference to most.
Frankly I could not help it but if you don’t like what I am about to say don’t blame me. Blame rather the gospel today which speaks about the fever of Peter’s mother in law and the many people in need of care and healing. I have never heard of dengue fever in the Middle East although the carrier, the aedes aegypti, is named after a nation in that area. Nevertheless it is told that she is sick and needs immediate care and attention. The disciples pleaded to Jesus asking him to heal her. And Jesus, it is told, stood over her and rebuked the fever, and miraculously, the fever left her.
You are nurses and like Jesus you are called to help people recover from their ailments and diseases. Unlike Jesus however, you do not do it by simply rebuking the fever and driving them out by word alone. You cannot imitate him I believe in his miracles. You are not miracle workers. However, you have one capacity that you can emulate from Jesus - to care for the sick with a caring heart like Jesus. You may not heal them like Jesus, but you can care like Jesus. And this is what is most important.
I know that this is hard work. It is not easy to care even if you get paid for it. Caring does not come naturally and automatically in a person. It is something that you gather deep down from the pit of your stomach forcing it to come out of you. I said it is not easy especially if your patients are irritable and unloving in return. Caring, to be caring, needs all the strength of the will to come out. And this too is the experience of Jesus. That is why Jesus, after all those healing, and driving diseases and caring for the sick, had to look for a deserted place where he can be alone to rest and to pray. Caring as I said does not come out naturally. It needs the strength of the will.
Today you come to the end of your volunteer work in one of the busiest hospital in the island of Panay. You have known firsthand the suffering and the difficulties of sick and their families. You have come face to face with people in their most vulnerable situation when all courtesy and decency are sometimes shed. It was not easy. It will never be easy. But that is a fact we have to accept, the fact which makes caring difficult and at the same time challenging.
Do not be content with just being nurses. The challenge is to make yourselves caring nurses, nurses who care, nurses who can sympathize, nurses who can understand the predicament of a human being when it is most vulnerable and insecure. Remember that you are not just nurses. For some people you are their hope ,sometimes the only hope to bring them back to health. Remember, you may not heal but you can always care and that spells at lot of difference to most.
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