Today is International Nurses Day. Across Elysium, our nursing and healthcare support colleagues, work tirelessly to support the people who use our services. Today, we celebrate the positive contribution each and every one of them makes the people we support.
As we mark this very special day, we spoke with Hilton Vera, 
at Elysium, about his own nursing journey and why he nurses. We also discussed the diverse group that make up the nursing and healthcare workforce that Elysium is proud to call colleagues.
“I qualified as a mental health nurse in 2003. The reason I wanted to go into nursing was I was initially training to be a paramedic and I felt nursing was more in line with what I wanted to do in terms of helping people through their recovery journey and supporting them at their most vulnerable and difficult times.
“As a MH nurse you’re there to help them through that difficult stage and period in their life, through their journey to their recovery. I really just wanted to help vulnerable people.
“My nursing journey started at Farmfield on a medium secure ward. It was a steep learning curve, very interesting and I think I became a better nurse from being thrown in at the deep end, supporting really complex and challenging patients. I was lucky enough to have lots of really good mentors I worked with. It helped shape and define who I became and who I became as a nurse.
“I worked briefly in the NHS and then returned to Farmfield before moving to a female service in Dorking. While it was different and definitely more challenging, it was great to watch patients come in, progress through their journey, make their recovery and see them be discharged to live their lives in the community. It was very positive.
“No matter how challenging and complex a service or a role is, seeing people take positive steps in their recovery is very rewarding. It gives you the ability to carry on, even through the challenging times.
“Having that level of challenge pushes you to develop yourself to be better and to be able to improve yourself. Every day was a learning day. Each patient brings their own challenges and their own story and their own needs. No one day is the same. That’s good because you’re always growing and developing.
“I went on to hold Charge Nurse, Lead Nurse and then Deputy Hospital Director roles, then Hospital Director. The main difference is you’re not having that same level of interaction with patients and you’re having more of a clinical oversight over every aspect of patient care rather than focusing on individual care.
“But once a nurse, always a nurse! Even when I’m not involved in the day to day aspects of it, I always make sure I have an involvement in all aspects of nursing care and interactions with the patients is one of the biggest things for me, talking to them, finding out what we can do to support them.
“As HD though you can make decisions and while I do prefer the day to day of being a nurse, I also like the ability to make changes where they are needed to improve the lives of the patients and the work of the nurses.
“Since then I have held different senior regional roles and now this role which means I am able to work across different sites and services which has been good for me because we have lots of different fields. Being a mental health nurse, I am now getting an insight into all the different services we have; deaf, CAMHS, acute, neuro, learning disability and care homes – and it’s been an eye opener. I’ve been learning a lot about the different services we have and patients and the different needs of our staff.
“We are a really diverse group of nurses. We have different types of services with different types of needs, different skill sets and experiences, and those are all essential in providing holistic care.
“There’s never a dull day. Being a nurse is exciting, no day is the same. We are working with people who are vulnerable and who depend on you to support them so you need to have the empathy, be able to care for them, and advocate for them as well.
“It’s one of those roles and professions you don’t go into it for money, it’s a calling. It takes a certain type of person to be a mental health nurse and succeed as a mental health nurse.”