What My Mother Did To My Career!

I started my nurse training with a 'bee in my bonnet' (and that was a few years ago now).

My introduction to people living with dementia was as a child. My mum and my step-dad both worked at the local 'mental hospital.' I LOVED it there.

My mother was a student nurse having decided in her 40s to train as a mental health nurse. I remember going to visit her at work one day and peering through the window. She was on placement on a long stay ward. These people were not going to go back home.

I watched as mum and her colleagues settled people down at the table, carefully putting paper bibs around peoples necks. I watched one gentleman with a bib on clumsily wheel a wheelchair over to the serving table. There were rows of bowls containing bright yellow puddings and a couple of red jellies. I watched through the window as he carefully reached out and lifted each bowl and emptied them in to the seat of the wheel chair. It was all running over the edge in to a puddle of stickiness. My eyes were wide. In an instant he was having his hands cleaned by a nursing assistant and being gently led back to his seat. Another person wheeled the chair away.

Later I asked why that man had poured custard in to the wheelchair. My mother explained how this gentleman had been a farmer all his life. She said he had aways worked, he knew of nothing else and although she was unable to say exactly what he was doing she was very sure that the work was meaningful. "I expect he was used to filling up wheel barrows." She told me that after the wheelchair had been cleaned she had given it back to him. He spent the evening filling it with other less sticky things.

While I was quite astonished (and a little afraid) to see a grown-up behave so oddly I was mostly taken by the kindness and understanding my mother had. It was of course the right thing to do for him to fill up his wheelbarrow.

I knew that working with people living with dementia was for me. I was going to help farmers load up their wheelbarrows...

I wish the path had been THAT easy!

It was not many more weeks after that that my mother recounted a story of one of her dear patients who she talked about often. Gwen had beautiful long grey hair which was her crowning glory. A woman who had had long hair all her life. Mum used to say how much she enjoyed brushing it and how beautiful it was. Gwen had returned from the hairdresser with her hair cut in to a neat short style. A decision had been made that it was easier to manage like that. I remember my mum being so angry and upset about it.

This early introduction played a big part in showing me how it could be done. My mother showed me how kindness and understanding are the most important values in care. Although you would think that this is not necessarily setting the bar high, I had a lot of early experience working as a care assistant where these values were not demonstrated as most important.

This want to do this work put me in to uncomfortable situations. I had my own internal battles - as a 'people pleaser' I often found myself wanting to be no trouble, invisible, following the others like sheep but being compelled to make trouble when I had to speak up, when I didn't see kindness and understanding being demonstrated.

In my nurse training, with the support of amazing tutors, I grew in my bravery and I continue now to have to fight a little, although this time in post diagnostic care as our organisation battles to get evidence-based therapy available as a choice for everyone with a new diagnosis.

So with Mothers' Day tomorrow it seems fitting that I say thank you to my mum!

Laura is co-founder and director of Memory Matters South West CIC and Moments Cafe

For information on training visit www.memorymatterssw.co.uk