The Most Valuable Thing

Best-version transcript — the human transcription refined against a word-timed machine transcript of the cleaned audio. Spotted an error? Corrections are welcome.

Now here we are again. Somebody asked me if I would talk on nursing, and I'd really like to do that because the other night I spent an incredible evening with a head nurse, and we discussed many, many things. And it was obvious to us that what really makes a good nurse is what makes you go in for nursing in the first place, and that is that feeling, that feeling that you have that you want to help. You want to help the sick. You want to help your way, and that is why when you first graduate, you're full of this feeling.

It's like a young doctor. You go out and you're full of this feeling wanting to help, and this feeling is the most valuable thing in the world because no matter how good you are mechanical-wise, that is only really half the story of nursing. The other half comes from a feeling, a feeling for the patient, a feeling of wanting to help, a feeling of wanting to put the patient's mind at rest, to help them as much as possible. Now, I know through time, quite often we have bad experiences in hospitals, institutes, and we start to lose this feeling.

And when we lose this feeling, quite often what happens is that something happens because it's normally an experienced type of human being that gets in a position to teach. And if this teacher through time has lost this feeling, then this is a very, very bad thing, and I advise people to watch for this. Now, I may tell you stories today, and it really honestly doesn't matter if they're true or false. I simply want you to relate your experience to what I'm saying, and if you can get a connection, perhaps you can get this feeling back again.

Let me give you an example. I know one lady was in a hospital. I won't say where, it doesn't matter. She was very, very sick. At the same time as her, an old man came into the hospital as a patient. And it was midwinter, and it was snowing, and it was blowing. And this poor, poor old man was left out in the hallway, and he started to freeze because the window was open. Now this sick lady told me she got up, and she put blankets around this man, and she told the head nurse about it.

And she also told the head nurse that this old gentleman wanted to go to the bathroom. Now the reply from this person in charge was, Doesn't matter. It's probably too late anyway. Just leave him. We'll attend to him later on. Now, he was an old man of about ninety, and his brain and his mind was still functioning. Now can you imagine the amount of embarrassment that that gentleman had to go through because that head nurse didn't want to attend him? She'd rather wait till the damage was done and somebody else could clean it up.

Can you imagine the amount of damage it did to that lady, the other patient that saw this? Now, as coincidence would happen, here's a typical example because the same lady, the same head nurse, was a teacher. And she had a very, very bad habit of embarrassing all the students in front of patients. She loved to do it because she thought she was hardening them up. Well, honestly, the last thing in the world you want to do is harden up and lose that beautiful feeling. So what she was doing, in actual fact, was destroying this beautiful feeling that the students had before they even graduated.

Now this is felt all throughout the hospital. It's like going into a work or an office where there's a lot of negativity on. You can feel it. There's a feeling, and when that feeling is there, you can rest assured there isn't going to be good nursing and there isn't going to be good office work. And it's very, very important that you find this feeling. I don't think half the nurses in this world realize the gratefulness that patients have towards them. You know the old saying, you fall in love with your…

you're very apt to fall in love with your nurse. It's a temporary condition. It's really true. I remember even as a little boy, nine years old. And I was in to get my tonsils whipped out. And there was a nurse there that was so beautiful to me, so understanding of my condition. To this day, I have never forgot her. Never forgotten her. Now, that is what a nurse can give to another human being. And that is so much. And if this happens, if this condition resides in the hospital, then it's the halfway battle to recovering people.

And can you imagine the amount of help that such a nurse or such a condition would be to the doctor and to the patient and to the hospital as a whole? Let me try and explain this feeling, eh? How it works, how it seems to find its own level, and everybody seems to pick up this incredible feeling. Now, if you hear anybody fighting this, this wanting a nice feeling to help others, look at them. Listen to them. And if they're coming out with a lot of negativity and trying to stop this feeling in the hospital, then they're showing themselves up.

They're showing that they've lost this feeling. Again, I'll try and explain what this feeling is. You know, everywhere you go, every block that you go, everywhere you go to live, there's always certain houses. It's like the depression days when the people that were unemployed and down and out, they were walking all through Canada and United States, and they were looking for work. And if they couldn't find work, they asked people if they could chop wood, just for a meal, eh? Now, when such a person found such a house, they had this beautiful feeling that would actually help.

The house was earmarked. It was marked a certain way so that anybody else coming through, they could spot it. And this is what happened, because there was that nice feeling, there was that help. Now, children are a perfect example. They can earmark a house on their own. That is why, no matter where you go, there's a block of houses. There's always X amount of houses that are earmarked with children. And those children, for some reason, love to go to that house, because there's a feeling in that house that the children pick up before they're contaminated with all the negativity.

Now, this is not saying that the children leave one home to go to the other because there's no love in it. I'm not saying that. And I'm not saying that they had lost their feelings, hasn't got a love and a feeling, but there's something missing, eh? And that's what you've got to find back again. Because it's like, imagine those children in their own home. Now the parents will give them lots of love. They'll give them milk and cookies. If they fall and skin their knee, they'll put a Band-Aid on it.

But there's something a little bit different about the house that's earmarked with those children, because The mother there, or the parents there, they might not only just put the band-aid on, they might give it a little kiss to make it better. Now, I know it doesn't mean anything to you and I as grown-ups, but to a child, it's affection. Now, when somebody walks into a hospital, they can pick that up. They can pick up who's actually has a feeling of helping a patient and who is destroying the feeling.

And that is very important, once again, to try and recover the feeling that you had, that you honestly wanted to help human beings before the contamination came into your life and destroyed it. It's a return back to what you wanted originally. And I honestly, I can't see why people fight it. I'm saying, be very careful when you have teachers that destroy that feeling in the students because of negativity. You see, the feeling you get in return, do you know that lady I told you about that got up through the night and tucked that old man in in the blanket?

She told me the feeling that she got from that was incredible, and she couldn't understand why this head nurse… Didn't want to do the same thing. But it wasn't really the head nurse's fault. It's just that she had lost it through time because of the way we view nursing, or the way some view nursing. And as I say, the feeling. It's like if you were in Hawaii, they'd call it the aloha feeling, eh? But here it's just a feeling that you want to help. And this is why you go to nursing.

This is why you become doctors. This is why you become therapists. This is why you walk into places, orphanages, to help. It's because of a feeling. And that's what's lacking in the world today, is a feeling. And the greatest thing in the world is the negativity that creates the feeling in such establishments. They'll fight it. But you fight it too within yourself, because that's where you win the battle, when you recover the feeling of wanting to help human beings. And when you get this feeling, be grateful for it.

Now, I'm not telling you who to be grateful for. Just be grateful. Have that feeling of gratefulness. And that feeling of gratefulness will carry you through tomorrow, and it will carry you through the next day because you have that feeling of gratefulness. But if that feeling of gratefulness ever leaves you, then nursing is a chore. If nursing is a chore, you cannot possibly one hundred percent. Give your full help. It is only when it becomes a pleasure will you regain that beautiful feeling. Truly, this is really all I can say.

It's that lost feeling. Find it. And if you find it, then your profession will take a turn and your views of life will take a turn for the better. Thank you.