A nurse’s journey with autism: challenges and rewards
Introduction
Autism is a form of neurodiversity that both the general public and health and social care professionals are becoming increasingly aware of, although there remains much to learn about the condition. It is perhaps less well known that there is an increasing number of nurses, healthcare assistants, nursing associates and student nurses who are autistic. This article was written by an autistic author who has been a registered learning disability nurse for over 30 years. The article will briefly highlight what autism is and how it impacted my experience of being a nurse.
What is autism?
Autism has a 1–2% incidence among the general population (Autistica, 2024), meaning that there should be about 700 000–1.4 million autistic people in the UK (Office for National Statistics, 2024). There are 748 528 nurses on the permanent Nursing and Midwifery Council register in the UK as of November 2023 (Farrah, 2024), which
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