This study aims to explore the author’s experiences as an auxiliary nurse (also called a nursing assistant, nursing aide or health-care assistant) in a psychogeriatric unit in the mid to late 1980s. In the discussion, the author outlines the author’s approach to creative research practice and how the author has used autoethnographic materials to inform poetic inquiry as a way of making sense of the author’s experiences in the author’s first job as an auxiliary nurse.
The paper is based on creative practice, poetic inquiry and data re-animation stimulated by evocative autoethnography.
The poems address becoming a nurse, my liminal position as a nurse, the realities of auxiliary nursing work and the patient experiences at the end of life.
There are a few detailed accounts of the lived experiences of auxiliary nursing in psychogeriatric units. This paper uses creative methods to offer insights into the lived realities of both patients and nursing staff. Such an approach offers insight into how people become nurses, the liminal experiences of being an auxiliary nurse and observations on end-of-life care.
