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This is a text-only version of an article first published on Friday, 16 October 2015. Information shown on this page may no longer be current.
WHEN Paula Snow was a teenager she became a Christian while she was in hospital with meningitis.
It was there she was inspired to become a nurse.
She tells Jo Duckles her journey to becoming a senior staff nurse training younger colleagues in caring for patients who are reaching the end of their lives. Paula was 17 when she had a personal experience with God as she was lying in her hospital bed in her native New Zealand, feeling miserable.
"It was real enough for me to make a commitment.
I had spent a lot of time as a patient on the receiving end of care, and I found myself thinking how I would do things differently if I were a nurse," says Paula.
She was talking in the League of Friends Cafe at Oxford's Churchill Hospital having taken a break from a shift at the Sobell House Hospice, which is in the grounds of the Churchill. "Before I became a Christian I didn't like people very much, I was a young person who thought humanity was nasty to itself.
That turned around as I would think of how Jesus treated people who looked harassed and I understood his message. "At 18 she took a nursing course, more out of a sense of vocation than an interest in a career or learning clinical skills, although she knows those things are important.
"At the time I was 18 and thought I was going to be a missionary.
I graduated and couldn't get a job and couldn't understand that so I decided to lend myself to anything. "Paula started by taking a job as an occupational health assistant in psychogeriatric care, gaining as much experience as she could with elderly dementia patients and with older people with mental health issues who needed full time care.
Eventually she landed a job as a staff nurse in a nursing home, but after four years began to feel disillusioned and was sick of being bitten by patients and criticised about the level of care. "I found myself asking whether I'd got the wrong idea with God.
I decided to go to Bible college for a year to figure out who God was and to learn about the Christian faith," says Paula who did a ministry development course.
With some participants going on to plant their own churches, Paula went back into nursing, applying for a job in a hospice.
"It was the first time I'd heard of a hospice and I prayed about it.
My sister is a pastor and she told me that if it was God's will, I'd get the job. "Paula, who is part Cook Island Maori, believes her background helped her get the job at St Joseph's Hospice, at a time when the New Zealand government was looking for more Polynesian nurses.
She worked at the Catholic hospice for five years, but knew it wasn't enough for her and began applying for jobs in Britain.
She took a job in a Marie Curie Hospice in Belfast, arriving with just a backpack and nowhere to live.
"I relied on people to put me up until I could find a flat.
Until then I had never been on a long-distance flight, but I thought to myself 'what's the worst that can happen?' and I had to prove to myself I could do it on my own. "During those three years in Northern Ireland, Paula says she experienced set backs and felt disengaged from Christianity.
"I was realising that the foundations of my faith were real. It was a process of understanding," she says.
It was there that she got together with her now husband, David, who is British and was already living in Oxford.
She had known him for 17 years and moved to Oxford when they married.
That was when Paula became a nurse at Sobell House.
Now a mother-of-two, she has stayed at the hospice for 12 years and is now a Senior Staff Nurse and a clinical educator, responsible for training the next generation of nurses. "At the moment in the NHS there is a big challenge to train nurses up to as high a standard as possible," she says.
"I really want to follow who I am and what I believe in.
It's important that I maintain the high standards at Sobell House and get alongside developing nurses, instilling in them values of compassion. "The biggest thing I say to young nurses is to be in touch with themselves and who they are.
It doesn't matter what you don't know but it's important to be available and to want to learn and to listen. "Paula is aware that working in a hospice, trying to give people the best possible quality of life during their last months and weeks, can be distressing.
"Patients and their families can present you with questions and you are often put on the spot.
It's about learning how to validate people and when to keep quiet and listen, and that's a skill. "With many nurses passing through Sobell House as part of their training, it's Paula's hope that some will stay on longer term.
"They need to be called to this and it's not everyone's cup of tea.
The way I cope is to stick to the fundamentals of my Christian faith, reminding me of things I did as a younger person to deal with life's crises. "I will withdraw from the crowd, go to a garden centre and journal as well as doing Bible study and I find that God reveals so much about my situation.
I don't always get answers but I can mull and meditate on things.
There is a call currently in the NHS for nurses to reflect on their practice, but I think nurses have always reflected. "At Sobell House in particular, patients often have complex health needs.
Paula says: "People have had that diagnosis of, for example, cancer and have been told there are no more treatments.
The work you do at the end of life is sacred.
You hold a person and try to support them and their family.
You empower them to try and remain the people they have always been.
Our job is to work alongside them, and try to help them achieve any final goals.
They might want a final trip with their family and some want to go home and we try and help in that.
It's about working with people and celebrating their humanity.
It's an honour to work alongside these people.
When you witness someone leaving this world, their spirit leaving their body, it is something profound. "We have a wonderful bereavement counselling service for relatives.
These are people who have to go home and pick up the pieces of their lives.
We want to make sure they are supported in their loss. " Nor does Paula shy away from talking to her daughters about the work she does.
"I am honest with them and we have conversations about death.
I don't want them to have the wrong perception of it although we don't dwell on it," she says. Paula's Polynesian background gives her a view on the end of life and grieving that is different from a typical British perspective.
"In Polynesian culture people mourn together and that's natural.
When I came to England I found people crying in front of each other is not so natural, particularly among people who live in big cities.
I totally respect British people and their culture and the way they perceive their own mortality.
These may be generalisations and I respect people and try not to make assumptions. "I do think people should cry more.
It is therapeutic and it's a release.
I was reading Psalm 126 vs 5: 'Those who sow with tears will reap with songs of joy. '"
Paula, 46 is married to David and the couple have two children, Tabitha, 10 and Eloise, eight.
She worships at St Aldate's, Oxford. ;