An Impromptu Code Team on the Rugby Pitch

Eighteen months ago, I wrote about my experiences being a COVID-19 ICU nurse during the height of the pandemic, while also training as a member of the USA Rugby Women’s National Team. I focused on the connection between nursing and rugby by discussing the importance of the backline of defense in both the hospital setting and on the pitch.

Much of what I wrote there was driven home for me in a new way one day last fall at a local rugby field in New Jersey. It was a beautiful fall day and I was spending my last weekend home watching my brother’s playoff game before I would be heading to Colorado for a set of international rugby games with Team USA.

Credit: KJ Feury.

It was a typical men’s club division 2 playoff game, where the score was back and forth, and big plays were being created by both teams. It was nearing the end of the game when the away team had a scrum in their half of the field. Their #12, a player who had been making big hits and runs all game, made the decision to kick the ball out of their half to relieve pressure and reset play.

After […]

2022-02-15T08:54:27-05:00February 15th, 2022|Nursing|0 Comments

One in 4 Million: The Nurse Who Mentored Me

Hostility among nurses is a well-documented topic of discussion, a phenomenon studied by both academics and hospital administrators wanting to create functional teams. Perhaps the remedy for healthy nurse–coworker relationships isn’t found by studying dysfunctional relationships but by observing the successful ones.

I was lucky to have one.

I excelled as a student, even with balancing the role of nursing student with the role of mother to a preschool-aged daughter.

However, academic success and my talent for multitasking did not prepare me for the reality shock of a new-grad nurse.

Thrown into the deep end.

There was a nursing shortage. I was hired to a pediatric unit before graduation, skipping the two years of adult medical-surgical nursing before entering a specialty that was customary for new grads at the time. I began my first job, pending successfully passing state boards, with an interim permit.

It was an era before nurse residencies or comprehensive orientations. My orientation consisted of accompanying a day shift nurse while she managed her patients.

After two weeks, I began night shift on a 30-bed pediatric unit during the height of the respiratory infection season.

Night shifts were staffed with up to three RNs, overseeing certified nursing assistants. Often the CNAs came from agencies, possessing varying amounts of skill. As a new grad overseeing […]

Delegating: A Crucial, Sometimes Tricky Nursing Skill

Knowing where you fit in with the team.

Ralph Hogaboom / Flickr

As a new nurse I was entranced with my role. Throughout my schooling, I had worked closely with nurses and nursing instructors I admired, but out in the real world I was only beginning to understand how I fit in with the rest of the team. From those early years, I vividly remember two separate run-ins I had with nurse aides. I was so frustrated that they didn’t simply follow my instructions! Looking back, I think these disagreements were mostly about experienced workers “testing” me and our working relationship.

Delegation is not simple.

In “Delegating as a New Nurse” (free until January 10) in this month’s AJN, Amanda Anderson offers a wealth of practical information to help new and not-so-new nurses learn the art of delegation. I could have used her guidance back then. As she notes, delegation is not a “simple” task:

“It requires an appreciation of nuance and insight, both of which new graduates may lack. Delegation often requires skills that aren’t taught in nursing school and are difficult for preceptors to teach in the clinical setting.”

[…]

2018-12-26T10:34:48-05:00December 26th, 2018|nursing career, nursing roles|1 Comment

Learning New Skills of Supporting One Another as Nurses

I have had a couple of recent conversations with nurse coworkers who have been close witnesses to patient deaths that were particularly difficult. They told me how challenging it was to process the experiences with fellow nurses—even those whom they considered as good friends—in the hours and days immediately following the patient deaths.

Some conversations in the break room or in carpool rides would go into the medical details surrounding the deaths, but stayed away from discussing personal emotions beyond general statements such as “It was just really sad.”

Other conversations, they told me, were comprised of awkward silence—as opposed to a more intentional therapeutic silence, a deep listening. In both scenarios, my coworkers said they’d felt a lack of quality and depth in these encounters. While they hoped for an opportunity to talk with colleagues, who would surely understand the experience and details better than anyone else, ultimately they felt that they were left to sort out their thoughts and feelings alone.

Even in a unit where we constantly express gratitude for a strong sense of teamwork, my colleagues and I still struggle to help each other through the deeper experiences of grief and trauma.

A missed opportunity?

And at times when I’m in the charge nurse role and staff members are responsible for end-of-life care, […]

2018-01-18T10:02:53-05:00October 20th, 2017|Nursing|1 Comment

Connecting Emotional Intelligence, Team Communication, and Patient Safety

An Early-Career Nursing Memory

Photo by Barry Diomede/Albany Stock Photo.

Many years ago, fresh out of nursing school, I was in charge one night, with no other RNs on the unit. We had an “active GI bleeder” who needed hourly boluses of either ice water or iced milk through an NG tube. (Yes, the standard treatment at that time was gruesomely uncomfortable for the patient, and in later years determined to be counterproductive.) I had more than a dozen other patients to care for, but everyone got their meds and, miraculously, the bleeding man made it through the night.

When my supervisor made rounds at the end of the shift, I reported that all was well and that my critical patient had survived. Her only response: “Mrs. Todd! There is blood on your shoes!”

This senior nurse, standing there in her starched whites and impeccable shoes, didn’t recognize that I had feared I would be inadequate to the task, or even acknowledge my pride as a brand-new nurse in actually saving someone’s life. In retrospect, I can’t help wondering if her choice to focus on a superficial fact, irrelevant to the crisis, could be interpreted as an […]

2017-07-17T16:49:20-04:00July 17th, 2017|Nursing, patient safety|1 Comment
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