Night Watch

Editor’s note: In this tightly observed guest post, a nurse visiting a sick family member experiences the hospital as a kind of foreign country.

Eileen McGorry, MSN, RN, worked as a registered nurse in community mental health for over 30 years. She currently lives in Olympia, Washington, with her husband Ron.

The walkway is hard, the concrete cold, and I am immersed in darkness. Then there is the swish of the hospital doors and whispery stillness. The light over the reception desk shines on a lone head, bent over a book. A clipboard is pushed toward me. The paper on it is lined with names, some boldly printed, others scribbled, the letters unrecognizable. The spacious lobby is filled with individual groups of soft stuffed chairs and love seats. All of it quiet and empty. Over the chairs and sofas, the black of the midnight hour is changed into twilight.

I remember the bustle of the area at midday. Families gathered together, eyes searching the crowd for the green scrubs of surgeons. “She will live,” they say to some, and to others, “We will wait and see.” The frenzy of the day over, the empty chairs wait for tomorrow.

I sign my name in script. I use the old Catholic school script. The script preached by my mother, who is upstairs recovering from heart surgery. I walk past the chairs along walls so […]

2017-05-17T11:11:27-04:00May 17th, 2017|family, family experience, Nursing, patient experience, Patients|0 Comments
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Long-Distance Coaching

Patrice Gopo is a writer living in North Carolina.

The author Patrice Gopo

Moments ago I’d been crouching on my bed, but now I lay wrapped in a thick duvet. My panting began to slow to a normal cadence. Then a sharp rush. My midsection hardened, followed by intense cramping. With a swift motion, I moved from lying on the bed back to all fours.

“Find your point and focus.”

I heard my mother’s words through the speakers of the computer. My eyes locked on where the edge of the metal curtain rod met the white wall.

Around me, voices and images drifted away.

Before I gave birth to my first child, I didn’t know that between a tightening abdomen and waves of pain, Skype conversations were possible.

While I appreciated that technology could bring someone distant close, my mother wasn’t supposed to be a face on the computer. She was meant to be by my side and not in a living room 10,000 miles away. But my daughter had decided to slide down the birth canal 12 days before expected.

My mother describes herself as a practical person. “I’m a nurse. It’s in the job description,” she often says. When pregnant with her own firstborn—my older sister—her contractions began in the midst of an overnight shift in the labor and delivery unit. She completed the night’s job […]

2016-11-21T13:03:15-05:00January 9th, 2015|Nursing, nursing perspective, patient engagement, Patients|2 Comments
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Views expressed on the blog are solely those of the authors or persons quoted. They do not necessarily reflect AJN’s views or those of Wolters Kluwer Health/Lippincott Williams and Wilkins.
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