Nursing Student's Poem to Celebrate Learning Disability Week

My name is Victoria Denny I am in my last year of the Registered Nurse Degree Apprenticeship specialising in Learning Disability Nursing. Before this I was a registered Nursing associate and was trained as part of the pilot courses. I qualified as an RNA in 2019 and have spent the last 5 years working in that role in a respite setting. To celebrate Learning Disability Week, I wrote a poem about the value of people with learning disabilities

Why did you choose to train as an Learning Disability Nurse?

Way back when I was 18, I chose to enrol for the adult nursing degree, at the time I had a son who had been born with a congenital heart defect and I left the course to take care of him, I subsequently took a part time job at a youth club for teenagers with learning disabilities and fell in love with the role. I went on to become a healthcare assistant (HCA) in an NHS residential service for adults with an LD and complex health and have never looked back. It wasn't long before I realised how specialist LD nurses are. I chose this field because there is this whole group of people in our society who need support and often don’t get it when it matters. I want to have a clinical role and advocate for people and manage behavioural need and be creative and I realised that LD nursing will allow me to do all that and more.

 Do you think it’s important for nurses to be trained to work with people with learning disabilities? 

I don’t just think it’s important, I think its vital. I think our society has this wonderful group of people who all manage the world in a slightly different way to us and can find the world we live in quite challenging at times. Some of the people we support struggle to communicate their needs and struggle with environmental changes and need all the support they can get. We need people trained so that there are people out there that can work with someone with a learning disability and support them to be valued, respected members of their community. As nurses we can be there to encourage and support annual health checks and regular health screenings, pushing for medication reviews and helping towards an end to diagnostic overshadowing. 

 Why did you decide to write the poem?

I wrote the poem because I wanted people to understand that adults with a learning disability are no different to you and I. They are all individuals who can be happy, sad, angry, and upset. They just might need a bit of support with particular areas of their lives. I think there is sometimes a perception that when a person with a learning disability is seen to be shouting or upset that they are displaying challenging behaviours or being difficult but when I am upset, I am not considered to be behaving badly, the first thing people would do is tell me it's ok to feel that way. I have also written about people going to the pub because why shouldn’t they enjoy a pint like everyone else at their local? The poem's intention was to raise awareness and this year's theme for LD week was “do you see me?” which was perfect because we should all feel seen. Our service users all got to watch the video and enjoyed pointing themselves out in the pictures and seeing their memories. Some of the parents/carers gave lovely feedback about it too. 

What’s the best thing about being a Learning Disability Nurse?

I think the best thing for me is being able to be a clinical practitioner who can tend to wounds, manage catheters, give medication, administer oxygen, manage long term conditions such as diabetes etc and then also being able to be creative, plan activity session and days out and organise trips to local events. I then still also get to attend regular MDTs (multi-disciplinary team), write care plans, and risk assessments and have a case load. It is the most varied skilled job I could have. A stand out moment for me was how this poem has been received, I am incredibly proud of it and of the respite service I currently work for.