Peadar Hand 
Personal Profile
The Catholic Church and healthcare have a long history, with the Church being one of the largest patrons of healthcare efforts in the world. It is into this history that Peadar Hand has inserted himself, a young, practicing Catholic and a nurse.
Asked where the desire to enter healthcare came from, he cited involvement with hospitals from a young age, suffering from juvenile rheumatoid arthritis and being subjected to shingles and meningitis in rapid succession.
A common story for young people engaged in their Faith today, his discovery of other people who thought as he did was a revelation”
“So, I think from that I was very comfortable in a healthcare setting, but I always wanted to do something where I was actually benefitting people. I didn’t want to just like, you know, be sitting at a desk all day or even something very productive like being a farmer – which was nearly the environment I grew up in, there’s just not enough interaction with other people. You’re on your own too much. Even though it’s something important and it benefits a lot of people. It had to be something where I could actually see what I was doing and how it was affecting other people,” he tells The Irish Catholic.
If his desire to work in healthcare was real from a very young age, so too was his faith – although that’s not always the easiest road to walk in modern Ireland. Born and raised Catholic, the Faith was always present to him, but it wasn’t until he encountered other young people in it that he managed to open up properly about it to the world.
“I said my rosaries with the family every night and all this sort of thing, but I was kind of alone in it, because there was no one my age. And then, at Mass one summer, someone got up at the end of Mass and talked about Youth 2000 so I decided to go along and saw there was a tonne of other people my age who actually believed that God was real. You know, I didn’t agree with all the things that they did, but that really helped me be more ok with letting people know that I was Catholic because all through school everyone knew I was religious and I got constant ridicule for it.”
A common story for young people engaged in their Faith today, his discovery of other people who thought as he did was a revelation.
“It was always equally real to me, I’d never had a point where I even doubted, you know, the existence of God or the divinity of Christ or anything like that, but it became easier to actually espouse it and to comfortably let people know that I was Catholic, rather than, if someone was saying, ‘Oh, are you free next Sunday?’ I’d be like, ‘Ah actually, I’m not going to be around in the morning’. Kind of dancing around it like, instead of ‘No, I’m going to get Mass on Sunday so I’ll meet you afterwards.’ You know, confidently telling them who I was.”
So he chose a setting a Catholic can easily pursue their vocation to love in – a nursing home”
Regardless, the early clashes with others over faith did nothing to tamper down his support for unpopular causes. Working for the Pro-Life Campaign during the referendum, his course was set after the referendum was decided.
“I made a conscious decision after the referendum, because I’d worked with the PLC during it, so afterwards obviously I needed a job, and I was going to go back into nursing, but I didn’t know what was going to happen in Irish hospitals at that point – no one really knew – how things were going to work logistically. So I decided that I wasn’t going to look for a job in a hospital because I wasn’t taking the chance that I’d be even asked – even have it happen on the ward that I was on, even if I wasn’t involved. To have it happening 15-20 feet away from me, I wasn’t ok with that.”
So he chose a setting a Catholic can easily pursue their vocation to love in – a nursing home. It is here that he finds himself seeking to imitate Christ.
“I mean, you don’t consciously live out your faith when you’re working, you know, as a nurse, but you just act in such a way that the people you’re looking after – their day is better because you’re in it. And that’s, I mean, without doing month-long fasts or five hours of adoration a day, that’s the closest I can come to imitating Christ. It’s just taking people who need help and they’re in a better position because I was with them for 12 hours today than they would’ve been if I hadn’t been. And also just making sure that I separate that from my ego which is not always the easiest thing in the world,” he laughs. “You just have to keep in mind that you’re not doing it for feeling good about yourself, you’re doing it so you actually have a positive impact on them.”
It’s been a difficult year for everyone, but for healthcare workers, and particularly for those in residential settings, the stakes have been considerably higher.
Suffice to say, their efforts will be rewarded”
“The actual big problem was that – I won’t say work is stressful, I don’t like stress and I tend to steer away from it where I can, but it’s pressure. You know, pressure’s good, it helps you perform, it makes sure you don’t make mistakes because you’re keeping on top of yourself, you’re not relaxing. You’re keeping your standards up, so pressure is good. But you need to blow off steam when you’re not at work and this year you couldn’t do that. So, you just had all the pressure building up constantly without any outlet for it, so that definitely psychologically made things a lot more difficult.”
Suffice to say, their efforts will be rewarded.
