A wealth of nursing voices.
I’m always amazed at the number of powerful, wise, courageous, funny nurse voices we have a chance to publish on this blog. Looking back over the past year, here are the links to a few posts by working nurses that stood out as worth another look.
Honoring the Moral Concerns of Caregivers Afraid of Giving Morphine
“‘I told her I’d take care of her,’ he whispers. ‘She took care of me. Now it’s my turn. I made her a promise. I don’t want to do the wrong thing.'”
A Day in the Emergency Room for a Nurse Who Loves Her Job
“I put my shoes on in the car like always. The shoes never go inside, as they bear remnants of the day before. I walk in to meet my tribe. We laugh off the previous day’s challenges as we start over.”
Comforting Our Patients: The Importance of Well-Chosen Words
“There’s seldom an opportunity to edit or revise on the floor of a nursing unit. Words cannot be unsaid.”
“They march into my heart like little soldiers. There are lads and lassies, rich and poor, sporting bling and brawn.”
“I find that I have been so transformed by my experiences as a bedside nurse in a pediatric ICU that I will simply never return to that state of pre-nursing normalcy.”
And here are a few other posts by AJN editors that address key nursing issues.
Experienced Bedside Nurses: An Endangered Species
“The trend toward our hospitals being primarily populated with nurses with less than two years’ experience is worrisome.”
Instructor Incivility Toward Nursing Students
“Eye rolling, reprimands within earshot of classmates, criticism of the student in front of the patient, and even frank bullying and intimidation are examples of instructor behaviors that some students have to cope with.”
Suicide Among Nurses: Poorly Documented and Unacknowledged
“One evening I came to work to learn that my new friend would not be at work for a while. She had tried to kill herself.”
Decreasing the Trauma of IV Sticks: For Patients and Nurses
“I learned every trick to coax a vein to appear and which gauge needle would work the best to avoid puncturing through the vein. I was so ‘into’ IVs at one point, I’d note the veins on people’s arms, judging whether they’d be an easy or hard stick.”
Why Do Journalists Ignore Nurses?
“Nurses—and nursing’s role—are made invisible; our contributions are devalued, relegated to little more than a backdrop for most stories about health care or news involving delivery of services.”
What would you like to read about here or in the journal in the coming year?
All are oh so true.
What a great collection of touching and memorable quotes! I hope they inspire our nurses to rededicate themselves as we say goodbye to 2018 and begin a new year. Thank you Jacob!
Mary Anne Rizzolo