'...nursing is not so much about tasks, but about how in every detail a nurse can provide comfort to a patient and a family. It is a privilege to witness people at the frailest, most significant and most extreme moments of life, and to have the capacity to love complete strangers. Nursing, like poetry, is the place where metaphorical and literal meanings cross borders. A hole in the heart is a hole in the heart; the nurse is the thing at the centre: between the surgeon's skill at fixing the literal hole, and the patient's anxiety and loss, the metaphorical hole. Nursing is - or should be - an indiscriminate act of caring, compassion and empathy. It should be a reminder of our capacity to love one another. If the way we treat our most vulnerable is a measure of our society, then the act of nursing itself is a measure of of our humanity. Yet it is the most undervalued of professions.'
Christie Watson, The Language of Kindness: A Nurse's Story, p.265.
