It is one of the oldest professions, and arguably one of the hardest and most thankless. Not only is nursing a very physically demanding job with long shifts, but it also comes with a huge mental strain.
We all know about the current pressure on the NHS, and part of that is a shortage of nurses. A survey by the Royal College of Nursing earlier this year showed that only a third of shifts had enough registered nurses on duty.
It is difficult to imagine just what a day in the life of a nurse is really like, but as the RCN heads up to Newcastle this month for its International Nursing Research Conference, Alphabetti Theatre hopes to help audiences experience just that.
“The Nurse’s Station” aims to captures the busy hive of its namesake, created using accounts from real-life nurses. Described as a “celebration of their enduring spirit and dedication”, the story is told as a folk musical, with music by Ruth Lyon. I spoke to Alphabetti’s artist director Ali Pritchard, who co-wrote the play and is directing it, during their busy rehearsal period.
Ali, this will be one of your last productions at Alphabetti - how did it come about?
Alphabetti was approached at the start of the year by Northumbria University’s Nursing and Midwifery Department to run an event for the RCN International Nursing Research Conference. At the time I was planning my final season of work as artistic director of Alphabetti Theatre, so we threw around a number of ideas and eventually we landed on a folk musical. I’ve always loved working with musicians and writing musicals, so when the idea for Nurse’s Station was floated, I jumped at it – immediately approaching the incredible composer Ruth Lyon, who I have wanted to work with for years.
You say the production is “crafted from real-life stories of seasoned and newly trained nurses” - how did this work exactly?
Whenever I write, research is always a large part of my process. So when it came to The Nurse’s Station, although I have spent a large amount of time in the care of nurses (with an extremely breakable body!) I had never really delved into the people behind the uniform. So that was the angle I started with – the physical Nurse’s Station is where those people can let their armour down and be human, taking a break from the constant pressure to maintain a thick skin.
Dominic Simpson, Assistant Professor at Northumbria University Nursing and Midwifery, took the lead and started the research by simply taking people out for a coffee. Some of these discussions were recorded and sent over for me to digest. Meanwhile I was reading hundreds of essays and short stories by nurses from across the world, and from all this information I started to create a rough story board. I was extremely keen to avoid over-dramatising it. I wanted to offer truth, but also joy, celebrating the normality in an interesting way. Exploring who these people are.
What was the standout story for you?
If you want to know that you’ll have to come see the show! One story that didn’t make the script was about a nurse who had served in the army. Whilst they were on tour and in a remote location, they had to do emergency care on a dog, which ended up getting air lifted to safety. The story ends happily as the dog survived and came back to serve, but I struggled to get that one into the script.
More important than the anecdotes though, are details that helped to build characters. Our fantastic cast have really brought these characters to life – characters with a plethora of tales and a real truth behind them. However, as an audience we are only witnessing a glimpse, seeing the 12-hour shift they are working that makes up the timescale of the play.
What did you learn while crafting this play - about what it’s like working in nursing and in the NHS in general?
The vastness of the organisation. In Newcastle Hospitals Trust alone there are 15,000 staff members, and in that amount of people there is such a fantastically wide range of individuals. However, what I used to always see was a uniform instead of the individual inside it. What we have tried to do throughout the creative process is to really show those people, who have the same dramas as us – be it problems at home or in the heart.
What does the play tell us about the main challenges nurses come up against day to day?
As a writer I am incredibly interested in how powerful words are. I’ve already mentioned that I was very keen for the twelve hours of our shift not to involve monumental drama in the form of a birth or death or something that sticks in the mind – so I was very excited about the day to day, hour by hour. It’s fascinating just how they have to manage their time, and how words mean so much.
What does it tell us about the current state of the NHS?
I don’t think it tells the audience too much that they aren’t already aware of – that the NHS is amazing but it’s a struggle and that we could all do a tiny bit more to help it, help us and our loved ones.
What kind of impact are you hoping the play will have?
One of the questions we have been exploring throughout the creative process is, ‘What would the world look like if we all tried to be more compassionate to one another, if we worked harder to see the person behind the human in front of you?’
I believe that lots of small things can make a big difference, and that art is essential to what defines us. It might sound bizarre, but that is why I make my work. I want to make the world a better place, I want to entertain, and I’d love for people to think and care for each other a little bit more. I’d be very happy if that was the impact of The Nurse’s Station.
“The Nurse’s Station” opens on Tuesday 10 September at Alphabetti Theatre in Newcastle-upon-Tyne and runs until Saturday 28 September.
Tickets and more information on their website HERE
