Saturday, June 29, 2013

Sharing Stories - seeking recognition



This week I am sharing an idea I had whilst spending Sunday tweeting!! Anne Cooper shared a link from a US Website. It was a wonderful account by a nurse about her clinical experiences. It was well written and extremely moving. I started thinking about the stories shared on Twitter and Molly Case’s recent triumph with her poem at  RCN Congress and I wondered whether it was time UK nurses shared their stories.
 
 
Nicola White  a writer in Scotland has been a “writer in residence” at the School of Nursing at Edinburgh University. Her experience has shown what a diverse range of stories nurse have to tell and what rich learning there can be from paying attention to what folk are saying.
 
The link Anne Cooper shared was originally from a book of Nurse’s Stories and when I discovered this I had the idea that maybe UK nurses could do a similar thing. For some time now I have been composting the idea of writing a book (a small one) about my journeys in nursing. This task has often felt daunting and I have not got far with it but collaborating with lots of other wonderful folk feels much more my thing.

I went to Kate Evans’ book launch this week in Scarborough, at the rather wonderful Edith Sitwell library, and that got me even more fired up about this project. I met a long time hero of mine Linda Finlay   and she so understood my PhD failure that I really felt my plight had been heard. I am one of the case studies in Kate’s rather wonderful book and her analysis of my writing block has been both troubling and empowering. See here for a link to Kate's blog

So I have suggested the idea of a book out on Twitter and have had quite a lot of interest from folk offering their story. I found time to write an outline proposal and feel it might be a project that might see the light of day.

If you are reading this and what to share your nursing story then let me know. I don't think folk need to write a lot but we do not want it written well. You might need to practice writing your story and I am happy to help craft it into a meaningful narrative. Don't be scared and don't think you don't have anything worthwhile to say - you will have and others might want to know about it.  
BOOKS!!!
 

2 comments:

  1. I have just realised that I have made a career out of getting off at the wrong stop! A great analogy. Where do I sign up? I want to write my story.

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  2. Sue - I have been thinking about A Year of Compassion - 365 stories. Not sure if that resonates but thank you for your courage and for being the catalyst for written word enabling essence of nursing to be reclaimed Andy

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