Weekend focus 16
Ashburton Guardian
Saturday, November 2, 2013
www.guardianonline.co.nz
Caring for the dying and their family has been a life work for Karen Hall, but this week she decided it was time to look for new challenges. She talks to reporter Sue Newman about the rewards and challenges of 30 years in palliative care.
Palliative care nurse says goodbye to 30-year career
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hirty years might sound like a long time, but when you’re doing a job you love time simply flies by, says district nurse Karen Hall. This week she packed her nurse’s bag for the final time, made her last home visits and called time on a career that has seen her work in one of the toughest nursing assignments, with the terminally ill. When she returned to work in between having her four children, Karen worked night shift as a district nurse for 10 years, returning fulltime when her youngest was two. That was in the days when employment was a much more casual affair. “My interview was just a chat and I was asked when I would like to start,” Karen said. Her involvement in palliative care evolved from there after the opportunity came up to attend education courses in Christchurch. “I balanced study around four children and working fulltime. It was a crazy thing to do but it worked.”
PHOTO DONNA WYLIE 301013-DW-207
Packing her case for the final time, for district nurse Karen Hall also means packing away a 30 year career at Ashburton Hospital.
Making it work meant having the family routine printed out on the fridge. Each child knew where they would be at different times and who was taking them there. Karen knew organisation had gone too far, however, when she found her two-year-old standing in front of the fridge waiting for someone to tell him where he had to be next. Her workplace has been the community, her work treating symptoms, knowing she can never provide a cure. Over the years Karen said she has often been asked how she copes working with people who are dying. There’s no simple answer to that, she said. “This is why I’ve continued doing education. If you have the skills and the experience you can help make a difference in people’s lives, the patients and their families. You know you can’t change the outcome, but you can use your skills to make it as good as you can for every-
one involved.” Over the years she said she had met amazing families who had coped in very difficult situations. That has left her with priceless memories to take away from her job. Like any job where you become part of people’s lives you also become attached to those people and that means developing some good coping techniques. “My escape has always been my family and my music. You learn to shut off, you have to. You can’t work in this field without being able to do this.” Working with people who were dying and spending time with their families was more inspirational than it was depressing. Working with children who were dying, however, was always heartbreaking, Karen said. “It’s always so hard for parents to watch their children dying. It was always difficult if
you had a child the same age, but we always had the opportunity to give that case to someone else.” Her job continuously hammered home the importance of doing the things you really wanted to do in your own life, she said. “I’ve had so many older people say things like, they wish they’d taken more holidays, they wish they hadn’t worked for so long and there’s a real truth in that.” In palliative care there was no such thing as a norm. Families and those who were dying coped with things in their own way, and a district nurse’s job was to be there as a support and to help them manage the dying process, she said. “You treasure and hold on to the fact that you’ve touched lives; that’s something a lot of people don’t get the opportunity to do.” Karen might be leaving the world of hospitals and district
nursing, but she’s adamant she’s not retiring. “That would mean I won’t work again, but I definitely want to do something. “I’m not sure what but I know there will be challenges and new opportunities out there. I feel really positive the time is right, that there is something out there I can do that is really worthwhile.” Those opportunities will most likely be in the health field; that’s her career and her passion. “What it will be I don’t know but it will be more part-time and I know I want to be more than a once-a-year grandma.” She plans to take a two- or three-month break, to enjoy family coming home for Christmas without thinking about work and she hopes that she and husband Matt can finally get to enjoy some summer fishing at their Rangitata Rivermouth bach.