How did Una's life prior to becoming a nurse help or hinder her in her role as a nursing student?

How did Una's life prior to becoming a nurse help or hinder her in her role as a nursing student?

I thought this was one of the most important parts of the novel. While surviving on the streets, Una didn’t have time to worry about others or really even consider her treatment toward them. As a nursing student, she saw the poor of New York in a different light. She was able to empathize with them. She treated her patients with dignity and saw them as human-how she herself always wanted to be seen. Una’s “outside of the box” thinking, allowed her to help her patients in different ways. She also had a lot of background knowledge in how poorer people lived/coped and knew how to intervene in less traditional, but effective ways. While it took her a while to trust the others around her, and trust in the goodness of what the nursing school was trying to accomplish, Una was able to become one of the best advocates her patients had.

I think this novel showed a real team aspect of medical treatment. Una had never been on a team before. Even if she worked with others on the street, she was always thinking about what was best for herself. In the hospital, she learned to work with others; to help them and accept help as well.

I enjoyed all aspects of the irony that Una became a successful nurse. First,
Of all of those who applied she was academically the least qualified. In addition to the fact that she had no desire to be a nurse but needed to lay low from the coppers. Next the requirements were to be of the highest moral standing and she is a career criminal who eventually decides that well, this could actually really further my criminal career by passing as a nurse- think of all that she can steal once she has gained trusted access to the homes of the infirm! It’s quite comical how she steals from the first doctor she encounters and initially tries to cheat her way through every test.
When it’s all said and done, her criminal past has taught her keen observation skills, a tolerance for the intolerable, and a toughness and fortitude that many of the other candidates struggled with.
Most important is (as another commenter stated): her deep compassion for the poverty stricken patients and her ability to think uniquely
Makes her so successful.

Una’s prior life was an asset to her life as a nurse trainee. She knew and was familiar with how people of the lower classes thought, and acted. She used this insight for common sense patient treatment.

Una had a very unique perspective into the life of her patients. she realized how difficult it was for them to stay warm, stay clean and eat well. Her common sense and insight into how it feels to be looked down upon made her a caring and compassionate nurse.

elizaj, your post made me laugh! Una was definitely still relying on her past survival skills when she enrolled in the nurse training program-and for quite a while after she got there. She talked herself out of not stealing and changing just to maintain her hiding place at first. Somewhere along the way, she realizes she could use her “skills” for good and that she really wanted to be a different person.

I loved how her past connected to how she treated her patients. She was much more at ease with patients than any other nurse/doctor, because she knew how they lived from her very own experiences. Everyone was amazed at her rapport with the patients.

I relate it to being a teacher in the inner-city. As someone who grew up in the inner-city, I see the differences between me and my colleagues who come from suburban/upper class areas. My students are much more at ease in my classes and have overall better relations. Commonality is such an important way to bond/connect.

As others have commented - what struck me was her compassion for patients, especially those that came from the streets. With her list of rules and her internal consternation about not getting involved, I was pleased to see that her common sense and good nature took over. It was frustrating for me to see how nurses were treated by the doctors and I'm hoping that is not the case today (but my cynical self says nurses still don't get the respect they earn).

As others have commented she was the least qualified for entering the program but her background as a grifter one who had no parents to rely on she showed potential for the being a nurse especially common sense and compassion. She felt she really could help those who were poor because she could relate to them and they could relate to her. Basically, she apply the skills she learned for survival to being nurse.

I feel it helped her at Bellevue because she seemed to have greater compassion and empathy for the patients, particularly the poor patients vis-a-vis the other nurse trainees. But it also hindered her, at least initially, because she was just biding her time to get through the class and always on the verge of expulsion. The incident leading to her getting "hands on" experience as a "nurse" had a profound impact on her and seemed to change her mindset regarding the training program.

I think it helped. She had innate empathy for her patients. As Una herself observed she learned to "read" her patients as she had read her former marks. Same skill put to a very different purpose.

As stated above, Una was comfortable and understanding of the poor, she had been there. She had also been mentored and protected. She was self reliant, street smart, defensive and yet still compassionate. She could "read" people in order to protect herself. She could be invisible when she needed to, she was sneaky. She had to learn to open herself to others, in this situation she could not make it alone. She could lie to cover herself. Unfortunately, she could not always control her street instincts and that was obviously going to put her in precarious positions.

I think it made her more sympathetic to the patients she dealt with.....she understood how hard it was living on the streets and showed them compassion.....something missing in some of the other nurses and doctors

Jessica F-you made an excellent point about commonality. It is very important that students, patients, clients can relate to the person who is helping them-and vice versa. By excluding women who didn’t check specific boxes, the nursing program was really doing a disservice to some of society. Not being treated well, being thrown in a moldy, dank room, or feeling judged could even prevent people from seeking treatment In the first place.

I believe her prior life on the streets was a definite asset. Because of her “station”in life at that time, she was truly able to empathize with her “less than” patients.

To be a nurse you can't be skittish - you have to jump right in and get dirty. Una's prior life showed her enough hardship that she didn't squirm in the face of anything they threw at her.

Because of her life in the streets, when she came to nursing she brought common sense, compassion and her sense of observation. She could relate to people and sympathise with their pain and their needs. Her experience was an asset.

I also think Una's prior life was and asset to her nursing career. She could think on her feet and was not afraid to care for patients.. She displayed empathy for those she cared for

Her prior life prepared her to be a chameleon in order to blend in, so as not to stick out and be noticed--although she sometimes had to rein in her scrappy nature and rely on her roommate to get her out of trouble. Her life before Bellevue also helped her learn to think fast on her feet, and rely on her own intuition and judgement.

Just like any real life experience can help you navigate challenges (even if unrelated) later in life. It gave her grit, determination, unflappability, and a lens that someone that was handed everything or didn’t experience trauma would never have. This gave her an emotional intelligence that can’t be taught in nursing books.