What we'd like to know from you is the role spirituality or religion plays in your life as a nurse. How does it inform your practice or help you make meaning out of what you do? Does it have a place in serious discussions of nursing as an evidence-based profession deserving of equal respect to medicine as practiced by physicians—or should it be kept out of sight and seen as a strictly private matter?
When I worked in primary care I was always frustrated by orders to give patients a handout on low-fat diets (and two minutes of explanation) and send them on their way. Once, a patient came in with back pain; she’d fallen out of a chair that broke when she sat on it. While her eyes glazed over, I spent a few minutes going over the diet the doctor ordered for her. At the end of this painfully futile exchange I asked her if she had any questions. She responded, “Have you ever thought of cutting your hair short?” Something tells me she didn’t run right out to buy vegetables and join a gym.
I don’t know if my input made the least difference in the final product, but some months ago I was contacted by a writer for Nurse Jackie who wanted to talk with me about nursing and the series. I told her that I wasn’t looking for the perfect nurse character, since I know that perfection is not the stuff of great drama and comedy.
For years, I had written tightly focused articles on advances in the treatment of asthma, diabetes, and other diseases and on important issues like the nursing shortage. But when I was given a Nieman Fellowship for Global Health Reporting at Harvard University, I decided to look at a larger theme . . .
I was wrong about this being an isolated incident—every year since then there has been more and more violence against health care providers who provide abortion services to women in communities across America. The violence has escalated, clinic personnel have been murdered, and thousands of cases of vandalism, stalking, bombings, arson, and other serious violations have been reported.