District Nursing was the reason I stuck out my training in Cambridge. If it hadn't been for my placement in rural Canbridgeshire after 6 hideous weeks on a geriatric ward I would have left. The professionalism and compassion I witnessed for the next 2 weeks sustained me until I could do it myself. At last someone in the public sphere has recognised the work DN's do...
"District Nurses are the unsung heroes of the NHS and I witnessed the most amazingly high standard of care and commitment which they gave to their patient and her family – and it made a sad contrast to the low standards offered by some hospital nurses."
http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/news/judithpotts/100178908/you-cant-be-a-good-nurse-if-you-dont-have-innate-compassion-thank-goodness-district-nurses-have-plenty/
I get sick and tired of the attention acute nursing gets - community nursing is special and very skilled but often invisible or seen as a lesser form of nursing. We need to build the profile of District Nursing - one of my students said exactly the same thing as this blog when her Mum died this year. We hear so much about Macmillan and Marie Curie but so often it is the DNs doing the work. I left District Nursing because it was limited by its own imagination in relation to the work it could do - I suspect this is still the case.
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