Dear readers,
We are now in June 2025. Time flies! The more years go by, the more I find myself living in different time zones: I mean the present, the past, and the future. Is that just part of getting older? Maybe.
For many people, time is critical. I'm thinking of our fellow healthcare professionals who are currently working in war zones, conflict areas, and disaster zones.
On Instagram, I mostly follow hospitals, universities, academies, the NHS, WHO, Médecins Sans Frontières, the Florence Nightingale Foundation, ESNO, and others. These are the pages that interest me the most.
My heart breaks whenever I listen to international doctors and nurses who are working in Gaza. When I started writing this article, I thought, 'How can I not mention this horrendous conflict?' I can, and I must talk about it. On social media, I see doctors crying when they return home and describe their experience working for charities in Gaza. The situation is so awful that it's hard to comprehend.
Hospitals are bombed, smashed, ruined. Healthcare professionals are buried under concrete with their patients, a graveyard of cement when all they are doing is their duty. They tried to help their patients but became victims themselves.
HOW SICK IS THIS?
As nurses, doctors, and healthcare professionals, when we treat illnesses in our patients, we always strive to find a cure or reduce symptoms if possible.
But this GAZA SICKNESS…. Where is the light at the end of the tunnel?
When will global politicians become doctors and nurses, heal these wounds, and let people live their lives with dignity?
WHEN?
How many more people must die because of this toxic political MADNESS?
I wrote an article in April 2025 about worldwide conflict and how nurses become war nurses. I feel the need to repeat my words. The written word shall be my sword to fight for peace, justice and healthcare!
Please read my thoughts from April below.
NURSES UNITED FOR PEACE IN GAZA.
Best wishes,
Sabine
Being a Nurse in the War and Then Becoming a War Nurse
Over the last few weeks, a beautiful and most important song has come back to my mind. I sang along to Pink's
'Dear Mr. President,' released in 2006. I sang along in the car, shower, and kitchen. I sang the words to this amazing song (well, I tried to sing them).
Eighteen years after its first release, this song still speaks the truth and tugs at my heart — my Florence Nightingale heart. It was initially written for and about George W. Bush, but I believe it could be addressed to any president or political leader worldwide.
This month's column focuses on our healthcare colleagues who work in extreme situations, such as war zones. I have chosen to focus on this area because I recently read a paper from the Physicians for Human Rights, which stated that the number of healthcare professionals being killed in conflict situations is increasing globally.
We all watch the news. We watch with shock at the terrible destruction and loss of life. Then, I think about the healthcare professionals working in these war-torn countries. How can it be that they have to live through this horror and pay with their own lives when all they want to do is save people? Even writing these lines is a challenge. It's so hard to understand, hard to get my head around. It doesn't make any sense.
When I nursed and cared for during the COVID-19 pandemic, I thought, 'Yes, I am a war nurse' like the nurses who served in the Great War and World War 2. I felt like I was fighting for my people, my patients, and my country — Great Britain. 4 years down the line, our colleagues in other parts of the world who survived COVID-19 and served their countries as nurses, doctors, midwives, physiotherapists and so on, are now struggling to survive the bombs that are being dropped on them every day. This time, it's not a virus they're up against; it's a war caused by politics.
Dear Mr President, come take a walk with me….
What I see on the news is completely incomprehensible to me. Hospitals are smashed to pieces, and bombs are dropped on medical facilities, which are places of healing, treatment, nursing, care, and empathy. We see hospital staff covered with blood; we see beds and floors crowded with the critically wounded; we see patients dying; we see doctors and nurses working without essential medical equipment; we see children and mothers crying. Nurses, doctors, and midwives are pushed to the most extreme limits and continue to work, fighting for their patients. My deepest sympathies go out to them all, to their families, to all the people caught up in these awful circumstances.
Dear Mr President, come take a walk with me….
As a nurse, I find it almost impossible to avoid becoming political when I see my fellow healthcare professionals on the news facing these horrors. I find it impossible to shut my eyes and cover my ears when it's all there on the TV, online, and in the newspapers when I know what's happening to these people.
How can any politician live with this bloodbath, with this wreckage, this ruin, with the deaths of hundreds of nurses, doctors, midwives, and thousands of civilians and soldiers, too? Is this the legacy they want to leave behind?
Nothing else?
Dear Mr President, come take a walk with me….
STOP NOW, MR PRESIDENT!
Sabine
