About Hui-wen Sato, MSN, MPH, RN, CCRN

Hui-Wen (Alina) Sato, MSN, MPH, RN, CCRN, is a pediatric intensive care nurse in Southern California and blogs at http://heartofnursing.blog.

How to Support the Nurse in Your Life, May 2022

Photo by Dương Nhân from Pexels

A few years ago, I wrote a blog post directed towards friends and family members of nurses, entitled “How to Support the Nurse in Your Life.” While the ideas in that post still hold up today, so much in nursing has changed, the COVID pandemic being the obvious main factor. With nurses in more need of support than ever, I find it important to revisit this idea of helping friends and families supporting the nurses in their lives at this unique point in time.

1. Listen to what the nurse is actually distressed about in the moment, and stay with them there.

In normal, non-pandemic times, nurses already have many people, situations, and issues to tend to in addition to the actual patient. There are so many unique aspects of the nurse role that challenge us, all of them rolled into a tangled ball in the course of a 12-hour shift. If we are distressed about one particular aspect, please stay with us in your focus on the actual issue at hand so we have time and space to unpack it without all the other competing stressors vying for all our attention.

For example, we might be upset […]

2022-05-02T09:19:45-04:00May 2nd, 2022|Nursing|2 Comments
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Finding Effective Means of Rest as a Nurse and Mother

When I had my first of two children almost nine years ago, I switched from full time (three 12-hour shifts per week) to part time (two 12-hour shifts per week). With my husband working four 10-hour days per week, this arrangement has allowed our family the incredible privilege of not needing childcare outside of the family.

That said, the arrangement also means that I as a nurse and mother have very little opportunity to rest. When I’m at work, all cylinders are operating on high alert in every way—mental, physical, social, emotional, and spiritual. When I’m home, I am keeping tabs on everyone’s physical, social, emotional and spiritual needs. I’m managing the housework, trying to keep track of groceries, struggling with creative and healthy meal prep, and caring for a complicated dog and two less complicated tortoises. My husband and I are deeply involved in our church community and trying to faithfully maintain friendships. I have various speaking engagements to prepare for. Life is incredibly full.

In the midst of life’s ongoing demands, I’ve had to become smarter about approaches to downtime and venues of rest that are actually restorative.

Beware of default mode.

As much as I find cleanliness and organization in my home to be refreshing and calming in their […]

2022-04-13T13:02:18-04:00April 13th, 2022|Nursing|0 Comments
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Can Grieving Loss of Idealism in Nursing Give Room for New Hope?

It is no secret by now that the pandemic has dealt blows to morale in nurses like never before. The issues are being voiced everywhere—nurses find themselves overworked, understaffed, underpaid, disrespected by both the health care system and many in the general public, in sometimes deeply startling ways.

As professionals who come to work every day looking to help, restore, and heal, we found ourselves losing our idealism about our profession. On top of our ongoing grief over our patients—both COVID and non-COVID related—we’ve also felt the loss of watching increasing numbers of beloved colleagues either leave the profession or leave our units, often because of preexisting issues highlighted by the stresses of the pandemic.

This is not at all to say that their reasons for leaving are wrong. It’s only to say that those of us who stay feel the grief of seeing them leave and wonder anew about our own longevity in this work, even as we support their decisions and wish them well.

Four motivations that have kept me in nursing.

This has left me inevitably asking myself why I still stay. My motivations for staying in this work and in my current workplace are:

  1. To provide meaningful, helpful care to my patients and families.
  2. To work in a supportive environment that is life-giving and […]
2022-01-28T09:57:59-05:00January 28th, 2022|Nursing|0 Comments
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The Gift of Feedback

By Giulia May/Unsplash

In a recent Schwartz Rounds session at my hospital, the facilitators centered the discussion around the theme, “The Gift of Feedback.” As I listened to the panelists share their experiences, I recalled two recent exchanges with colleagues I’ve developed positive working relationships with over the years.

One was with a hardworking care partner (CP) who has been in our unit for about six years. The other exchange was with an attending physician who had been a well-respected leader in our PICU long before my 11 years working there. I find both to be very kind and very professional.

Asking a care partner for feedback.

As one of the more experienced bedside nurses in our unit, about once every four to six weeks I fill the role of relief charge nurse. I’ve done it enough over the years to feel decently comfortable in the role, but I do it so infrequently that each time I find myself relearning aspects of the role.

The charge nurse always sits in the same station as the care partner who manages the front desk. This individual gets a close-up view of how all the different relief charge nurses handle the role. One day towards the end of a busy shift, I turned […]

2021-12-17T13:21:05-05:00December 17th, 2021|career, Nursing, nursing career|0 Comments
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Precepting: Revisiting Ground Rules with My New Grad RN

A return to precepting.

By Suzanne D. Williams/Unsplash

There is no question that precepting new grad RNs requires a lot of extra thought, time, and energy for bedside nurses also looking to take care of our patients and their family members. But even as an introvert who finds it challenging to talk nearly nonstop for an entire 12-hour shift, I have in the past still enjoyed precepting. I’ve found it deeply rewarding to watch someone under my mentorship grow in skill and confidence as a young nurse.

When the pandemic hit and sent my young children home for distance learning, I took a break from precepting, as my capacity for additional mentoring at work had shrunk significantly.

Now that my children are back on their school campus, I am preparing to precept a new grad who is part of a cohort that went through nursing school during a pandemic with considerable limitations to their clinical experiences. As I dust off my own preceptor hat, I have found myself revisiting what I want to lay out as a foundation for my new preceptee. […]

2021-10-14T09:47:10-04:00October 14th, 2021|career, new nurses, Nursing, nursing career|3 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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