When it came time to send that individual home from hospital, for instance, the question about who they were going home to and how they were going to be looked after was not asked. As we discovered, many of those carers were only learned about when their own health gave out, as a result of their caring responsibilities. Now there is a lot that they can learn, and just another couple of questions would have made all the difference to their ability to cope with those responsibilities. A little more education in handling and lifting. Mind you, it is only fairly recently that even the nursing profession has had any real assistance in terms of handling and lifting, as a speciality in its own right and something which many of you learned the hard way the very hard way, of just how difficult it is to do.
Nobody expects to be a carer, nobody expects to be a long-term carer.
Children may go through phases when you have to take extra care of them but that is not a long-term situation. And learning to cope in the home for someone who is changing in front of your very eyes is a real challenge. Those of you who have chosen the role of nursing, as a profession, have done so with a knowledge of what you are letting yourselves in for. The range, as I have said, has changed so much, the specialities have changed so much, that you start with an idea of what you can give and that changes as you progress through your career. In the fairly recent past, that would have meant making your own efforts to qualify, learn more, move on.