Do we forget things? Or do we by convenience’s hand ‘forget’?
Returning to work in health care after 20 years I am frequently struck by the notion that we are introducing ‘new initiatives’. And with much noise and PR these ‘new initiatives’ are introduced to workers on the ‘shop floor’ as the answer to everything.
For lots of us who have been around for a while it is an insult to be expected to applaud these, as well as being an opportunity to see in plain sight the regurgitating pattern of life as we currently accept it.
Looking back at our history it is clear that we do not ‘learn from our mistakes’ as war, domestic violence, brutality, disease and social dysfunction continue generation after generation. The outer coating of things may look a little different – style of weaponry, disease treatment, our outfits – but the discordance and lack of unity is persistent.
In health care one of the many lauded things to achieve is continuity of care and consistency of quality of care, a standard that has in previous generations been much more established than it is now, with care provided in community settings by health care professionals that lived within these communities. It is not long ago, for example that most people knew and built a relationship with their GPs, midwives, district nurses and health visitors.
In maternity services, research abounds about the positive impact of continuity of care – having a named midwife who is your first contact throughout your pregnancy, birth and early weeks as a parent. And the positive outcomes cover the physical, emotional and social wellbeing of all involved – well women who are supported through, and therefore enjoy, their pregnancies, have shorter labours, less pain relief, less need for intervention, a smoother experience of feeding their baby and have fewer hospital admissions. Because of all of the above the service provided is cheaper and our societies, full of well women, are richer.
And yet… very few women and families in the UK will experience anything close to this as the beast that is the NHS comes to its knees and the powers that be continue to try and massacre the magic that can happen on the ground.
I regularly meet women who have met a different midwife at every appointment, are woken throughout their first nights following birth for observations, medication, and anxiety inducing timeframes in which they ‘should’ feed their babies and have had such conflicting advice about what to do and what not to do that they are confused and unsettled.
We are on the one hand apparently blind to the devastation that is life currently, but are we really? Or are we waking up to the deviance, corruption, discordance and lies? Every day at work there are real life, up close and personal examples of the impact of life as we have accepted it and many examples of us waking up to the madness and asking questions of the accepted norm, but totally unnatural way we live.
This is brilliant, uncomfortable, inspiring and discombobulating all at once. Like breaking (unlearning) a habit that we have felt was a good friend or support at certain times but know innately has never truly served or supported us. There is a period of awkwardness or superficial nakedness, until we realise that what has been playing out has been an aberration and that what we are truly ‘familiar’ with is the deep settlement within.
From this foundation of settlement we can embrace life, work and all our interactions with others. And we get to be witness to the magic that then unfolds, through us but not from us, as we allow our true natures to be in life.
We are not goldfish. But we do need to shake down and wake up from a reverie that has us conveniently forgetting patterns of behaviour and the outcomes they generate. This is a responsibility that we then get to observe the impact of, as the systems that have bound us, dissolve in our awareness and honest questioning.
