International Nurses Day: "I care for others as I would like to be cared for".
"Being a nurse is a responsibility. It' s necessary to have a spirit of mission, a will to serve, in the best way possible, to guarantee the well-being of the other." This is how Lúcia Macedo, nurse for 17 years, and doctoral student at Católica, defines her profession.
She confesses that it wasn't a choice "thought through", because when she finished high school, "I didn't really know what I wanted to do". The certainty of this professional had to do only with "the pleasure of helping others. To be with people". It was this drive that led her to choose the Nursing degree at the Imaculada Conceição Nursing School in Porto, later to take a Master's in Nursing and now a Doctorate in the area of Child Health at the Institute of Health Sciences of the Universidade Católica Portuguesa.
A path motivated "by the need to address gaps in knowledge in the area of specialisation in child health and paediatrics, which I wanted to deepen", having chosen Católica "for the quality of teaching and prestige of its teaching staff" and by the fact that "in this institution one researches to teach, putting research and teaching at the service of the community".
She says that she cannot see herself doing anything else, because "right in the first year of the degree course I knew that this was what I wanted to do in life". A certainty that ended up being reinforced at the S. João Hospital in Porto, where she began working, in the Cardiothoracic Surgery service.
"Dealing with suffering is not easy. But I always put myself in the place of those in front of me. I take care as I would like to be taken care of and that is very important for anyone working in the Health area", adds Lúcia Macedo.
Despite admitting "it's very painful to take off the cloak and put ourselves in the patient's shoes, transferring to us what the other feels", she has no doubts that the result is "very positive".
It is in the hospital, in contact with "human fragility" that this nurse finds fulfillment, despite the " swapped shifts and the long working hours eventually take away much of the time I would like to dedicate to family and study."
The Doctorate in Nursing in the area of Child Health in a school context is the next stage of a life dedicated to others. For this nurse, the search for increasingly specialised knowledge, is essential "when we have the responsibility to put science into practice, in order to better care for the patient."
Lúcia guarantees that she has never regretted the choice she made 17 years ago. The best reward, says the nurse, "is when the people we care for recognise our value. When they feel that we are important because we were present at a moment of great vulnerability. A moment that happens at any stage of a person's life. It can be at the beginning, but also at the end of life," she adds.
Translated with www.DeepL.com/Translator (free version)