In the midst of chaos – both personal and systemic – a certain aspect of nurses’ work matters more than most people know, on this week where we recognize, celebrate and advocate for nurses’ essential contributions to care. I want to draw specific attention to the relational work nurses do every day, work that is embedded and thus hidden, in nursing practice everywhere. In a way, this relational work, also known as communication, is like oxygen. It is invisible. We all say it is important, yet we take for granted that it will be there when we need it. When it is impoverished or absent, we know our very lives may be at risk.
The podcast Radical Nurse Talk which I host, aims to reveal the expertise with which nurses engage with, navigate and support conversations with people dealing with serious illness and/or serious health problems. Their communication is not easy work. It happens at all the times of day and night – when others are around to hear it – and when they are not, when nurses are alone with patients in the liminal spaces between treatments and medical consults. Helping people make sense of things when they don’t, when a dreamed-of future is threatened or lost. At these times, a word, a phrase, a therapeutic silence in the process of care, can change a life and be carried with that person forever. This critical work counts and yet so far, capturing it so that it can be counted, has mostly evaded the quest for evidence.
In my conversations with amazing nurses over the course of the podcast, I have been continually struck by their relational excellence, knowledge gained in practice and informed by education, by theories and facts, by mentorship, by deep reflection on and learning from patients and their family encounters in the course of care. I feel so proud to be part of the profession that I could burst!
In the weeks ahead, when the celebrations fade, we can all do our part to ensure nurses are there when people need them. Let us not be silent. Let us understand nurses’ relational work beyond the unhelpful stereotypes that nurses’ communication equates to being nice. To the public, I ask that you think deeply about the communication you have had with nurses during times of serious illness or in serious health situations. How has it mattered to you? To nurses, let’s talk about it. To everyone. Recognize and claim communication in serious illness as the essential and complex skill it is. Demand it be understood as such and its value demonstrated, by those who make decisions about nursing work and its compensation.
Radical Nurse Talk 
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