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In a recent conversation I had with a very young nurse, she shared about her hope and deep desire to “be a good nurse.” I picked up on the stress in her voice as she described her admiration for her preceptor and her feeling of being overwhelmed with the steep learning curve during orientation. I couldn’t help but wonder how she defined a “good nurse,” and whether that definition was realistic or oppressive.

This prompted me to ask the question in my social media circles, “How would you describe a good nurse?” I wanted to hear from both health  care workers as well as people who were not.

There were a lot of responses, but one that stood out to me from a friend who is not in health care was this:

“Delights in their work and does it with excellence.”

This stood out because I rarely hear nurses talk these days about delighting in their work. After all, I remember my own recent response to a good friend when she casually asked me how work was going. I paused as I always do when trying to answer that question. After a few moments, my response to her was, “It’s always hard to know how to answer that. . . . I feel like in my work context of a pediatric ICU, it’s either ‘bad,’ or ‘really bad.’”

Her face grew sober and I immediately felt the guilt of being such a Debbie Downer. But I couldn’t get myself to answer any other way. It feels strange to say that work in a PICU is “going well!”

The Merriam-Webster dictionary defines “delight” as “a high degree of pleasure, satisfaction, or joy. It can function as either a noun (a feeling of great happiness or a source of that happiness) or a verb (to please greatly or to take immense pleasure in something).”

We could get into all kinds of nuance about how delight in the work of nursing may be context specific. Maybe delight comes easier, or more obviously, to a 1:1 private home health nurse who cares for a child with special needs in the context of a loving home. Maybe delight comes easier to nurses who work in outpatient clinics where the population is stable and focused primarily on wellness.

The voice of ‘no.’

But am I, as a pediatric ICU nurse, also able to delight in my work?

The “no!”s come fast and loud.

“No! Your work involves so much death and dying, among kids no less! It’s heartbreaking and tragic and bizarre. No one wants to hear about your work at a dinner party because it’s too depressing.”

“No! Health care is stressful, broken, and inequitable in our country.”

“No! People mistreat you and underappreciate you, to say the least!”

All of these things are true and hard.

And yet.

Something deep in my gut still believes I can, and do, experience an element of delight in my work. Not just deep meaning, but actual delight.

Enumerating delight.

It’s not just in the low-hanging fruit, like the cute babies who get better. It’s not just in the hilarious 10-year-olds who say ridiculous things. It’s not just in the parents who help me see what genuine hope and unconditional kindness look like.

I delight in the work of bringing a chaotic room into peaceful order by way of diligent organization, advocacy for prompt pain management, intelligent and compassionate responses to anxious questions, and humanizing presence with the patient and family.

I delight in the work of building connections and relationships with people that I otherwise would never be connected to, much less entrusted with such intimate presence and care of.

I delight in watching teammates see each others’ needs when caring for the sickest of patients and work in almost subliminal tandem to fight for a life.

I delight in seeing young or struggling colleagues work towards growth and breakthroughs, and in seeing them develop into confident leaders who then teach others.

I delight in the breathtaking beauty of tenderness, courage, and steadiness in showing up for people who are unmoored, grasping, and otherwise alone in despair.

I delight in watching colleagues serve in a meaningful way as proxies for family when blood relatives will not or cannot be present at the bedside of sick children.

I delight in helping to deliver the gift of modern medicine, providing lifesaving care that was completely unavailable 10, 25, 50, 100+ years ago.

I delight in the ability to use the many aspects of myself to do work that can make such a difference. Where else can I come to work with so much hope and potential to transform a terrible day for the better, even just a little?

Guarding a love for this work.

Even when laced with uncertainty, stress, overstimulation, and grief, these aspects of the work of nursing still give me life. While clouded by plenty of imperfections, they make the work more than worth it, indescribably special, a privilege—dare I say, even a delight.

Delight is not denial of suffering, nor is it the absence of grief or frustration (and I would propose that granting proper space for the processing of heavier emotions is key to preserving delight). Rather, it is finding meaningful goodness that persists alongside them. In retrospect, I wish I’d said something like this to that young nurse:

“Yes, there is a lot to learn here, and that learning never stops. But once you get established in your foundations, you won’t lose them. What we’re more in danger of losing is our heart and love for this work. I hope always to guard an enduring love for what I get to do here every day.”

(Previous posts by Hui-wen Sato can be found here. Interested in writing for AJN Off the Charts? Learn more here.)