It was about two years ago, when our volunteer – Ashwini Jain, interviewed this amazing person who came to India from Australia in 2009 to establish an institution with Dr. Naveen Chandra Shetty in Nitte, a rural area in coastal Karnataka. Today Nitte Rural Psychiatric Centre stands firm and has cured and rehabilitated so many patients with mental disorders. The man we are talking about is a Nurse Manager today who specialises as a Psychiatric Nurse. Meet Lloyd Brennan! Since we last interviewed him, he is now retired and just had his 70th birthday. However he continues to be a very strong advocate for people with mental illness. He recently presented a paper on a recovery model for people with severe mental illness.
We realised there was more to learn from his inspiring journey into the field of nursing and here’s more to his story!
Growing Up With Undiagnosed Dyslexia
Lloyd Brennan left school at the age of 14 as he was never able to cope with school. It was only when he was in his thirties that he was diagnosed with Dyslexia, a learning disability. At the age of 15, he had taken up a job as a labourer at the steelworks and was later trained as a forklift driver. At the age of 16, Lloyd completed a St Johns First Aid course and he believe this was the first exam he ever passed up to that time in his life! When he turned 17, he was invited to become a volunteer ambulance officer in training. In his own words, he took to this like a duck to water!
Lloyd says, “At about this time I realised that my educational level would never allow me to have a professional career in the ambulance service or anything else. The only option I had was to go back to school at night but this was not an easy time. It took me 4 years of night school plus holding down my employment as a forklift driver, and continuing my training as a volunteer ambulance officer to improve my education level.”
At the age of 20, he was appointed to the position of permanent ambulance officer/paramedic. He continues, “After 5 years as a paramedic and a very traumatic accident, where for the first time in my medical life I really didn’t know what to do for a poor man who died in my arms, it was early in the morning and I was on my own. It was raining and dark! This man was standing behind his car putting things in the boot of his car when a drunken female driver slammed into the back of his car. This resulted in severing both his legs at the knees. I did the best I could with the limited equipment I had available but he quickly bled to death.”
“I decided that I needed more intensive training so I applied for nurse training and was accepted. This was a very difficult time financially for 3 years, as I more than halved our family income. If you have a dream follow it, please don’t be an ‘if-only’ person looking back with regrets.”
Deep Diving Into The Field Of Nursing
Lloyd Brennan says that his lack of education held him back for many years. He was 25 years old, married, had a 9-month-old baby boy and a house mortgage when he started his general nurse training.
He says, “I was a late starter in nurse training. However, in retrospect, my poor education turned out to be an advantage for me. As a paramedic I had the privilege to go into people’s private homes and get a peek into their life. I’ve seen many miscarriages, births, and sicknesses. This gave me the opportunity to see people in some form of trauma or medical crises. I noticed that when people are sick, hurt or in an accident, the image they present of themselves at work or in the community in general is not the one they have at home in their private family life. I would explain this to my students as we all have built barriers around ourselves to protect us from being exposed to being hurt emotionally. This is very normal behaviour for all of us.”
Lloyd talks about an experience that gave him deep insight into people’s behaviour that he didn’t know about,
“In the early years of being a paramedic I attended what we called a fender bender (a minor car accident). I was only around the corner when I received the call over the radio. The car was on its side and I remember seeing the wheels were still spinning. As I looked into the car I recognised the driver as he was a very prominent cardiologist at the hospital. As you could imagine he was very shaken up and a little confused. His first and only words to me were- ‘Am I going to die?’ He had lost all his protective barriers and was just a man who was totally out of his safe environment. He in fact had very minor injuries. By the time I treated him and transported him to the hospital, he had regained his composure and had so many protective barriers around himself you wouldn’t recognise he was the same person!”
What It Takes To Be A Great Nurse
- Always listen carefully to what your patients are saying and if necessary repeat it back to them for clarification. Practice the art of good listening with your family and friends and remember to take notice of their body language and what they are NOT saying. It is just as important as what they are saying.
- Don’t be a cranky nurse and don’t be moralistic about your patient’s lifestyle. You don’t know what trauma they have been through behind closed doors.
- Try not to give advice. It might seem helpful at the time, however patients with a personality disorder will deliberately sabotage themselves for their own unmet needs and then they will blame you for the problems in their lives.
- Always treat people with kindness and empathy. Empathy is the capacity to understand or feel what another person is experiencing. However, for a young nurse it takes time to understand the real needs of a person. Remember that you cannot wipe the tears away from someone’s eyes without getting your hands wet. In time you will understand their pain.
- Do not under estimate the kind words of encouragement and hope you can give to your patients. Do you remember a time in your life when you may not have obtained the pass mark in an exam and a few kind words and help from friends has lifted your spirits? If we have hope we have life.
Tackling Challenges – Being A Male Nurse
When asked about the challenges he faced as a nurse, Lloyd Brennan says, “For me discrimination was a big problem with the hospital management where I trained for 3 years. I was a square peg trying to fit in a round hole. The senior nursing staff made it very clear to me that nursing was absolutely no place for a male. Several unpleasant experiences with regards to my gender in this profession taught me to have mental toughness (resilience) which is helpful in nursing. I would always encourage my staff and colleagues to step out of their comfort area and have a go.” He continues,
“When I was a young paramedic I was working on a patient who had terrible head and chest injuries, but his life slipped away on the way to hospital. I felt that I had somehow failed and as a result he had died. A mentor of mine pulled me aside and asked what was wrong. I explained to him exactly what I did in treating this man. He said, ‘Lloyd you did everything you could but given more time you might have tried something else. You only fail if you stand back and do nothing.’ I never forgot these words!”
FAIL to me means First Attempt In Learning!
Nursing As A Profession And Its Demand
- If you don’t like people please stay away from a career in nursing.
- If you are looking for romance and glory, don’t try nursing be an actor instead.
- If you are of a critical nature and like to moralise about other people, don’t become a nurse.
“If you are none of the above and have a genuine desire to help people in need I would encourage you to consider nursing as a career”, opines Lloyd.
Lloyd Brennan shares that doctors are highly trained in diagnosing and treating people’s illnesses but in the real world they very much want and rely on competent nurses to assist them, be it in a ward or working in the community or their private practice. Nursing is a career that will always see you in employment, your nursing skills are transportable all over the world. You can choose to work fulltime or part time to meet your lifestyle at that time.”
He further reminisces,
“As I look back on my career as a nurse in answering your questions, I realise that I have overcome so many obstacles that it has built in me a mental toughness to deal with challenging incidents in nursing and my private life. It has also given me a greater understanding of people and their inner needs and a real love and forgiveness for people who have made mistakes in life. Only a fool never learns and continues to judge other people without looking inside themselves.”
Takeaway – Habits That Help
I have learnt that all behaviour makes sense only if you know what a person is thinking. Listen carefully to what is being said and to what is not being said verbally. Take notice of their body language particularly in psychiatry and emergency wards.
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