ABSTRACT

So why read this chapter? After all, this is a textbook – one that I also picked off the shelf and chose carefully, among a few others, at the start of my studies. Perhaps the answer lies in those very textbooks; or perhaps the point is that it does not. Among the books on anatomy and biology, ethics and communication skills and all the other subjects that leapt out from a 3-year curriculum, what was missing, for me, was a voice that said ‘This is what it was like, the experience of being a student nurse – at least, this is what it was like for me.’