Tilda Shalof > Quotes

“The hospital will never be healthy for patients if it's not a healthy environment for nurses, where their voices are heard and where they can care for their patients and use the full extent of their knowledge, abilities, and skills. After all, hospitals today have become one big intensive care unit: all patients need intensive caring.”
― Tilda Shalof

“I’m often asked, "Isn’t nursing depressing?" I have experienced real depression in my life, but not because of my profession. Nursing is the opposite of despair; it offers the opportunity to do something about suffering. But you have to be strong to be a nurse. You need strong muscles and stamina for the long shifts and heavy lifting, intelligence and discipline to acquire knowledge and exercise critical thinking. As for emotional fortitude- well, I’m still working on that. Most of all, you need moral courage because nursing is about the pursuit of justice. It requires you stand up to bullies, to do things that are right but difficult, and to speak your mind even when you are afraid. I wasn’t strong like this when I started out. Nursing made me strong.”
― Tilda Shalof

“She was a woman who conquered herself so that she could serve others.”
― Tilda Shalof, A Nurse's Story: Life, Death and In-Between in an Intensive Care Unit

“I have never had a problem or a worry, either big or small, that couldn’t be made better by meeting with a girlfriend and talking about it over coffee. If only world leaders could do the same, I’m certain wars could be averted.”
― Tilda Shalof, The Making of a Nurse

“Medicine is becoming a business, and if people choose medicine as a way to make money, they should go to the States because there, health care is a commodity for sale and you can shop around for the best product. Patients are the customers and if you're rich you get better health care than if you're poor. In Canada, health care is a basic human right, a service that every human being deserves. Tell me, have any of you ever seen someone get preferential treatment? A Canadian over a non-resident? A white person over one of color? A VIP over an ordinary citizen?”
― Tilda Shalof, A Nurse's Story: Life, Death and In-Between in an Intensive Care Unit

“That is what nursing has taught me above all: compassion is the greatest wisdom.”
― Tilda Shalof, A Nurse's Story: Life, Death and In-Between in an Intensive Care Unit