Sister Lise Tanguay has devoted her life to helping sick people. Nearly 60 years ago, she joined the Augustines, a religious community that laid the foundations for the provision and administration of healthcare in Quebec.1 She recounts the past with emotion and gratitude and offers us, clearly and optimistically, her wishes for the future.<\/p>\n
Hello, Sister Lise. Thank you for welcoming us to Le Monast\u00e8re des Augustines, which is now a non-denominational place of accommodation open to the public, but also your home. How long have you lived here?<\/p>\n
\u201cI arrived in 1965. I did my nursing studies from 1961 to 1964, then I taught for a year at the nursing school. The nun who was in charge at the H\u00f4tel-Dieu de Saint- Georges left to do her master\u2019s degree in the United States and asked me to replace her. That changed my plans, because I wanted to enter the community, but she told me that if I really had the calling, I would also have it the following year (laughter). This allowed me to gain a great year of experience and live in an apartment. \u201cThen, I entered the community, took the three-year training, and started working at the H\u00f4tel-Dieu in 1968. I have very good memories of this; we formed a beautiful family as a healthcare team. Eventually, I also specialized in psychiatry, because the field really interested me.\u201d<\/p>\n
So, before becoming a nun, you lived life as a young woman in Quebec City?<\/p>\n
\u201cYes, and I had a great childhood. I had a great group of friends; we liked to go skating and dancing. We met up on weekends; it was nice. I even had a boyfriend at one point. But the calling was stronger.\u201d<\/p>\n
How did you feel this calling?<\/p>\n
\u201cI was very young, seeing my mother take care of sick people, when I felt it, and around age 12 or 13, I knew Iwouldbecomeanun. Iwantedtogivemylifeforsick people. It\u2019s hard to describe, but I felt it inside. It\u2019s mysterious, the calling. It\u2019s like love: when we decide to share our life with someone in particular, why do we choose that person and not someone else? It\u2019s a beautiful mystery!\u201d<\/p>\n
The nursing profession, especially since the pandemic, is going through hard times. Nurses are overworked, their working conditions are deteriorating, and many are leaving the healthcare system despite increasingly pressing needs. How do you see all that?<\/p>\n
\u201cThe healthcare system isn\u2019t really easy for these young people to live with. In the 1980s, all the experienced nurses retired, and that\u2019s when the system started to break. We can\u2019t replace people who have extensive experience in the care field overnight with people who are just starting out in the profession, even if they\u2019re full of goodwill. It was necessary to take advantage of the experience of the old ones and continue the transmission. But we ended it too quickly, and we\u2019ve never recovered from the impact of that decision. \u201cHowever, I was hospitalized two years ago, and I have to say that I found the care impeccable. The staff was really good, even if everyone was overloaded. I was also able to benefit from new care techniques and technologies, which are extraordinary. We shouldn\u2019t shun progress, but today\u2019s nurses need to be very skilled and alert to be able to follow all that.\u201d<\/p>\n
What does it mean, to you who have been a nurse, to \u201ctake care?\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cFirst, it\u2019s about being attentive to the person you\u2019re with. It\u2019s considering them not only through the care they have to receive, but as a whole. You\u2019re taking care of the per- son physically, yes, but also psychologically. They may be experiencing stress and anxiety. They probably have family or friends around them, but maybe not either. You can\u2019t just consider the illness or the person you see on the outside; it\u2019s much deeper than that, and it\u2019s so beautiful when you get to know people. Needs are also different from one person to the next.\u201d<\/p>\n
Do you have any regrets about the life you\u2019ve chosen? Do you feel like you\u2019ve missed out on anything?<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019ve never regretted anything. And it\u2019s not like it\u2019s always been rosy! There are problems everywhere. Community life consists of women who live together but didn\u2019t choose each other and didn\u2019t receive the same education, so naturally, there were more difficult moments. And of course, around age 30, I asked myself questions. I told myself, \u2018if I continue down this path, but I leave the community in a few years, it will be too late to have children.\u2019 I dreamed a few times of rocking the child while saying my prayers. That wouldn\u2019t necessarily have been incompatible, but in the context of a life of devotion, it was impossible, so I had to make a choice. It\u2019s normal, as a woman, to ask yourself questions at certain points in your life. But fundamentally, these questions never made me doubt my choice, and I was very happy.\u201d<\/p>\n
What would you like to leave behind?<\/p>\n
\u201cGenerally speaking, I\u2019d like people to give themselves the tools to live a balanced life that suits them and a life where they have time to be together. I was very moved, during the pandemic, by the testimonials of those who rediscovered their families and the meals shared together. That\u2019s what I\u2019d like: for people to rediscover themselves and live together for real, to give time to the essential things, to sharing and rest. Yes, work is important, but to the detriment of people and families? It\u2019s essential to take the time to talk to each other; you don\u2019t just have to watch TV and be on your cell phone.\u201d<\/p>\n
Do you have one? A cell phone?<\/p>\n
\u201cAh, of course, I have one, and I wouldn\u2019t want to do without it (laughter)! We can use anything, but we have to use it wisely. We would be unhappy if technology disappeared! But moderation is always in good taste.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Sister Lise Tanguay has devoted her life to helping sick people. Nearly 60 years ago, she joined the Augustines, a religious community that laid the foundations for the provision and administration of healthcare in Quebec.1 She recounts the past with emotion and gratitude and offers us, clearly and optimistically, her wishes for the future. Str\u00f8m […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":18,"featured_media":52213,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1973],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-52218","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-interviews"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.stromspa.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/52218","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.stromspa.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.stromspa.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.stromspa.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/18"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.stromspa.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=52218"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.stromspa.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/52218\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":52221,"href":"https:\/\/www.stromspa.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/52218\/revisions\/52221"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.stromspa.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/52213"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.stromspa.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=52218"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.stromspa.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=52218"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.stromspa.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=52218"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}