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There are problems with nursing - such as the issue of nurses all having to do degrees these days. But that doesn't mean to say the entire infrastructure of nursing is falling about and that it is populated by unfeeling psychopaths, which is, frankly, the implication sometimes.

Does anyone really go into nursing intending to be apathetic, cold and removed from suffering? I find that very difficult to believe.

Because I've been so blessed with a background in nursing and spent so much time with patients at a really intimate, vulnerable time in their lives, the one lesson I've learned is that you never turn down a challenge where you can keep your creative integrity and your heart and soul and your sense of self.

I have seen good nurses and bad nurses. They existed along a continuum: from hard-working, kind and competent people, to office-hugging, bone-idle types, to apathetic, disengaged automatons.

You gain a certain maturity from being a nurse in a cancer ward.

For too long nurses have been undervalued, restricted in what they could do, with too few career opportunities in clinical practice. For far too long, nurses have endured a pay system that has held them back - both professionally as well as financially.

So much illness is self-induced - which I can't stand. And I'm not a good nursemaid. Don't call me if you're ill.

Life is too short to be miserable.

I am a fantastic nurse. I discovered this about myself, and I'm really fantastic about diagnosing things.

Something my mum taught me years and years and years ago, is life's just too short to carry around a great bucket-load of anger and resentment and bitterness and hatreds and all that sort of stuff.