Nursing Lunch

 It appears that health care has lunch breaks. Calling a hospital ward to hear important life affecting news regarding a family member's procedure, I was told to call back later because the nurse was having lunch. While I get it that all workers must have lunch, I wondered why someone else couldn't have answered the simple question - is that patient ready to receive a supportive family visit. I thanked and hung up my call to the desk person, one of at least eight who sit in front of computers at the nursing station, ones that must have records for every patient on the ward. Being a carless senior, to call a taxi and go somewhere without knowing if it is fruitless or not is rather important. Taxi fares are considerable going back and forth and while cheaper in some ways than owning a car, one doesn't travel in a cab lightly in forethought. There is seldom a time today, when dealing with the medical profession that doesn't involve a waiting line. Today I saw that Canada is considering hiring nurses from other countries and that's fine but why are we not producing nurses in our own country? Long time ago, young ladies who wanted to become nurses, were welcomed and they could always find a training facility in which to do so. Many of them were on-site ones in hospitals and when the persons in nursing training enlisted into the programs that were three years in length, they went to work on wards almost immediately. When going into a hospital it was easy to identify a beginning nurse or one during the various stages of their training and experience by their uniforms. Don't try it today.  Few students were denied a placement in the student programs. Later, universities took over training and although it still involved practicums off the campus, it didn't quite match nursing venues that were in hospitals or adjacent as so far as finances are concerned. It felt as though these nursing students who were an integral part of a real hospital, were more in tune with its  living, breathing edifices rather than the posh ivy covered educational buildings on a university campus. The nurse students of long ago, heard the ambulances coming and going, saw patients and their families crossing the grounds and entrances, the patients themselves as they went down hallways and conversed or were brought into wards. They could see the staffs of various departments on their way in and out of the hospital. Their atmosphere was not "somewhere else" but inside the "living  body" of the place and the reason for their training itself. When a young person entered training, they received a stipend and found room and board, but also had work times on wards from the start. When they worked as a student nurse, they saw their peers, patients and public close at hand and I believe it made them better nurses in the end. The realities were right under their noses and they could be fully cognisant of what lay ahead in the responsibilities as a professional. It must also have eased the professional nursing staff to have eager learners on the scene too, just as they had been. I am sure also, that the government cost burden was far less that it is today with student university fees that take a whole lifetime to pay back. Maybe it's time to turn the clock back in some ways, and look at what in-hospital training could save us all time and money and be highly beneficial to our health care system as well.