Nursing Spotlight
graduate Aaron Bates
A Passion for Humanity
By Clare KiernanReprinted with permission from
TouchPoints | January 2009
“Bella Coola and its people strengthened my love of nursing,” says Aaron. “I learned to be more human and, I think, a better nurse. Practice in Bella Coola was an ideal complement to the education I received at UBC. It also highlighted for me the reality that Canada is not immune to the struggles I experienced while working in Guatemala.”
Aaron Bates, (BSN ’08), looks to his future with hope and determination. The path that led him to the graduation ceremony this past November is a diverse mixture of languages (English, Spanish and French), study (nursing, sociology, international relations) and life experiences.
Aaron applied to the UBC BSN program from Guatemala, the small country which he says, “has broken my heart and opened my eyes.” As the country representative for Pueblo Partisans – a small Vancouver Island-based non-governmental organization – he designed a community development strategy for a displaced indigenous population and provided cultural interpretation, leadership and Spanish-English interpretation for visiting nurses doing clinical training there. His decision to become a nurse developed from those experiences.
“I provided translations of traumas and the rudimentary framework to understand the context of an individual’s particular pains, yet it was the nurses who were able to make these patients feel better by providing some physical relief,” he recalls. “I wished to integrate my experiences in Guatemala and translate them into meaningful social action. I could think of no better way of doing so than by dedicating myself to a career in nursing.”
During his program, Aaron had the opportunity for direct clinical learning in a variety of diverse settings. Perhaps the most influential was the Bella Coola General Hospital in the Bella Coola Valley on the central coast of British Columbia during his final clinical course. “It was a slice of our country that I had not previously experienced. While appreciative of the opportunities I had in Guatemala, I had begun to find it almost embarrassing that I was much more familiar with challenges faced by indigenous populations in Central America than those of aboriginal populations in my own country. In Bella Coola, I saw the human side of conditions we had been guided to explore at UBC. I was able to offer my nursing knowledge to a population that, nearly without exception, was welcoming and appreciative of my efforts.”
As a new graduate, Aaron is continuing to seek opportunities that will challenge him to explore his capacity to make a difference as a registered nurse. He has taken a position at Dartmouth General Hospital in Nova Scotia. “I've enjoyed this, perhaps more than any nursing I have yet done. We see all of humanity. We never really know what is going to happen. We don't see people at their best, yet we have the privilege of entering into the most intimate parts of peoples’ lives and assisting in their care. In the hectic world of the emergency department, I have the privilege of working with nurses with 25 years of experience, nurses with five or fewer years of experience and others, like myself, who are just entering the profession. Colleagues seem genuinely pleased to offer mentorship and to share their knowledge. Nurses, physicians and other staff respect each other's unique knowledge and unique roles. And, there is so much to learn.”
At the Faculty of Applied Science congregation ceremony in November, Aaron was chosen as the student speaker for the 2008 graduating class. In his address, he spoke to his own passion for nursing and recognized comparable commitment that all graduates within the Faculty of Applied Science – which includes nursing, architecture and landscape architecture, and engineering – have for their interconnected capacity to contribute meaningfully to the betterment of society. “We are as diverse as those whom we strive to serve. We are motivated by so much, in our choice of this caring, and trying, profession. We recognize that our universal humanity is perhaps best expressed when we are at our most vulnerable, and require the intimate care of strangers.”
“So much of what we do as nurses depends on you, the engineers, architects and landscape architects. We may understand the physiological changes that occur with diabetes and heart disease, and even understand how neighbourhoods and highways affect the distribution of these diseases. Yet, we neither build highways nor do we design neighbourhoods. So we will need to work together, to combine your passions with ours. We must work across disciplines if we wish to contribute to solving some of the most pressing issues on the planet, and in our neighbourhoods.”
