Yellow Triage Flower by zayzayem / Michael Zimmer, via Flickr.
Being very good at anything takes a lot of work. I’m impressed as all-get-out by people who get to be really good at, say, nursing. Or writing a blog. Or juggling. Or welding. I’m especially awed by people who get to be really good at more than one thing. In drifting through the blogosphere this week, I’ve come across some nurses with triple-threat skill sets, as it were. Have a look!
If you read Julianna Paradisi’s blog, you probably know that she’s been a pediatric intensive care nurse and now works as an adult oncology nurse. She’s also an accomplished painter with numerous group and solo shows to her credit. (I’m especially partial to the Greetings from Slabtown series, which depicts decaying buildings from an industrial area in Portland, Oregon.) She blogs about health care and art, and sometimes, on how these intersect. In On Art and IV’s Part I she tells us, “I have an affinity for privacy,” then considers the difference between charting and writing; in Part II, she writes about bringing focus and conviction to bear in one’s work.
At Adventures of GuitarGirlRN, a ER nurse blogs about the job with grit and enthusiasm (the occasional rant notwithstanding). One recent post, “Sorry, Nice Man,” begins: “But I couldn’t handle you being nice to me the other day. I was running around like a crazy person on a night when we were packed to the rafters.” I was hooked. As you might suspect, GuitarGirl RN is also a rock-and-roll guitarist and bassist. She’s played guitar in several bands and now plays bass in her husband’s band. Their gigs get just passing mention on her blog, but there’s a sample MP3 or two to be found, including “a goofy song” written for her stepdaughter.
Misadventurous Melissa blogs about everything from working as an RN in a busy hospital and caring for elderly parents (“Every day when I visit Daddy, he tells me with a wild look in his eyes to ‘take care of your mother.’ It is starting to sink in just what he means.”) to dealing with California wildfires. She’s also an attorney, and matters of law get an occasional mention. When her facility circumvents the nurse–patient staffing ratio by not counting a dead patient, she observes drily,
In spite of being dead, dead patients are quite a bit of work. The paperwork is heavy and we were expecting family to come. . . California’s law is that there must be one nurse for every five patients. I wonder if it’s okay to assign more patients if some of them are dead?
Hannah Stanwood, who blogs as Milliner’s Dream because she wears many “hats,” is a nurse, a blogger, and a birth and postpartum doula and childbirth educator, among other roles. Her posts about being a doula include her thoughts on certification. And her posts about “ordinary real life” hum with just that.
—Sylvia Foley, AJN senior editor
Thanks. I’m adding these links to my blogroll.