Adventures in Nursing
Although you might not suspect it from her gentle voice and serene manner, Georgina Walter, a clinical nurse specialist at the MUHC, has a taste for adventure. Satisfying this appetite is one reason why she moved from her native Antigua to England to attend nursing school in the 1970s.
“When I decided to go to nursing school, I was really just looking for a way to convince my parents to let me travel,” Walter laughs. “A young girl certainly couldn’t go to Europe unsupervised, but school was a structured environment where I suppose it seemed like I couldn’t get into too much trouble.”
Walter fortunately did stay out of trouble, finishing her nursing degree and starting her career in a British hospital. It wasn’t long, though, before she indulged her wanderlust a second time, moving to Canada when her husband was offered a career opportunity in Montreal. Soon after, Walter began working at the Royal Victoria Hospital in high-risk obstetrics. “Early on, I discovered that I prefer to work in specialized fields of nursing,” Walter says. “Along with the human contact that is at the heart of every nursing job, I like the excitement of keeping up with new developments and mastering the latest procedures, medications, and technologies.”
These very qualities drew Walter to gastroenterology when she heard that a job in the division had become available. “My friends and co-workers all thought I was making a huge mistake,” she recalls. “In obstetrics you have the chance to experience incredible joy and to form a unique relationship with the mothers. By comparison, GI seemed remote and mysterious.”
Despite the trepidation of her colleagues, Walter took the position and immediately felt she had made the right choice. “There was a real air of excitement around GI. The field was advancing quickly, important innovations were being developed all the time, and researchers were constantly finding better, more accurate, and less invasive ways of diagnosing and treating GI disease,” she says.
Ultimately Walter’s passion for nursing is fuelled by people, not procedures. “What’s the most important part of my job? I cater to the patients, mediate between them and the doctor, and do my best to advocate for them,” she says. “When people come in for procedures they are very often filled with dread, both at the procedure and at what the doctor might find. I’m there to reassure them, to hold their hand, to keep an eye on them during the procedure, to dispense pain medication if I see they’re uncomfortable, and to monitor their vitals and make sure that nothing is going wrong. I think patients need to know that while the doctor is focusing on performing the procedure, there is someone there whose whole job is to focus on their safety and comfort.”
