“This book is about interpreting what you see and hear in order to make better judgments.”

Tundra Swans, watercolor and ink, 2021 by Julianna Paradisi

It’s my opinion that every nursing textbook should open with the above statement. However, it’s from the introduction to Sibley’s Birding Basics, by David Allen Sibley.

During home isolation of the COVID-19 pandemic, my husband and I took up birdwatching as a way to get out of our home and entertain ourselves while maintaining our “bubble.” Armed with binoculars, David’s camera, and my artist’s field bag, we visit local wetlands and wildlife reserves, recording our finds. That led me to read Birding Basics.

Experience coupled with pattern recognition.

As a nurse, I can’t help but link the idea of “interpreting what you see and hear in order to make better judgments” as a definition of a nurse’s intuition, commonly referred to as a “nurse’s gut.”

While there are times when a nurse’s clinical intuition borders on the psychic, many of these revelations are a product of bedside experience. For instance, patients, including infants, sometimes exhibit facial grimaces or say words that a hawk-eyed bedside nurse rightly interprets as signs of impending doom such as a cardiac […]