Cape Breton woman reflects on nursing career of 46 years

On International Nurses Day, Evelyn Schaller looks back on her 46 years in the profession.

Evelyn Schaller’s nursing career of 46 years started because she wanted to help people.

“I went to see my family doctor - he was a nurse before he was a physician, and he said, ‘why don’t you try nursing?’” Schaller recalled on Monday at her home in Sydney Forks, N.S.

The Cape Breton woman graduated in 1964 from the Victoria General Hospital School of Nursing in Halifax. Though her career began and ended in Nova Scotia, she also worked at hospitals in Sarnia, Ontario and in London, England.

Over the years, she witnessed a lot of firsts.

“The first one I remember is the introduction of chemotherapy,” she said. “I was there when we did the first kidney transplant. The first liver transplant.”

She also helped care for patients who underwent Nova Scotia’s first open-heart surgeries, and was around for big changes to things like antibiotics and pain medications.

“I was there for the HIV epidemic, when we had all these young men come in and we didn’t know what was wrong with them,” Schaller recalled. “We knew they had a pneumonia and they were sick, but we did not know what the cause was.”

Schaller said as the years went on, the camaraderie among the nurses and the bonds formed with some of the patients stood out more than anything else.

“Later on, I did it because I just loved it”, she said with a smile. “I loved being part of the action - seeing what was happening, and being part of it.”

Looking ahead on International Nurses Day, Schaller says there are more nurses than when she started out. She feels they’re better educated and have better tools to do the job.

When asked what advice she might give, she had plenty.

“To keep in mind that people aren’t patients by choice and so therefore, they deserve dignity - number one - call them by their name,” Schaller said. “Treat them respectfully. And to be as kind and compassionate as you can in the circumstances they find themselves in, and you find yourself in.”

She had one other message for today’s young nurses.

“Nurses have to take care of themselves,” Schaller added. “If you don’t take care of yourself, you can’t take care of anyone else. So that’s probably the biggest lesson I learned.”

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