A Child’s Story, or Why She Became a Nurse

Illustration by Anne Horst. All rights reserved. Illustration by Anne Horst. All rights reserved.

Day in and day out, a child lives in fear. Her stomach often twists in knots of pain for hours before the pain fades away. The doctors can find no medical reason for the pain. Her mother angrily accuses her of faking it, of being more trouble than she’s worth. The child is often told how stupid she is. Though her father sometimes protects her, at times his medication doesn’t work and he transforms from a caring protective father into a crazed abusive one. Even when the child is unharmed, she stays in a constant state of panic as soon as she walks in her front door.

That’s the opening paragraph of this month’s Reflections essay. “A Child’s Story” is a tough read. It’s about child abuse, helplessness, the will to endure, about those who help and those who don’t. In the end, it’s a hopeful story, despite everything. The story is also a reminder of just how much the decision to become a nurse means to some people. Here’s a brief excerpt, but we hope you’ll read the entire short essay (click on the article title above).—Jacob Molyneux, senior editor

 

 
Bookmark and Share

2016-11-21T13:04:25-05:00June 30th, 2014|career, nursing perspective|2 Comments
Read More

Nursing Blog Links, Late Winter Edition: Emotions in Primary Colors

By Jacob Molyneux, senior editor/blog editor

by doortoriver, via Flickr by doortoriver, via Flickr

Nurses seem to have hope on their minds as the daylight grows longer and stronger and the winter ever so slowly winds down. There’s a good post at According to Kateri about hope and letting go of the past.

Which reminds me: sort of along these lines, we recently had a good post here at Off the Charts about hope and patient prognosis.

Theresa Brown’s latest at Opinionator, a New York Times blog, is about the communication gap between clinician and patients and the need to find ways to bridge this, for everyone’s sake.

There’s a post at Not Nurse Ratched about another of the more basic emotions: anger. Or, more specifically, anger related to workplace issues that are slowly driving you nuts. Not that any nurses can relate to that . . .

If you’re up for it, here’s a pretty profound post from Hospice Diary about someone who is very articulate about the meaning of his own dying process.

And here’s a kind of funny one at Nursing Notes of Discord about the questions a new nurse asks in the course of a day.

Bookmark and Share

2016-11-21T13:05:22-05:00February 18th, 2014|career, healthcare social media, nursing perspective|0 Comments
Read More

Not Compatible With Nursing

By Marcy Phipps, RN, a regular contributor to this blog. Her essay, “The Love Song of Frank,” was published in the May (2012) issue of AJN.

photo 1-1 Photo by the author

“His family knows this is not a survivable injury, right?”

This question, posed to me in the doorway of my patient’s room by a trauma surgeon I regard as brilliant, caught me off guard.

“No,” I said. “They don’t know that.”

He frowned at me, mumbled something about false hopes, then moved away to continue his rounds.

This wasn’t the only physician who’d expressed a strong opinion regarding my patient’s mortality—a consultant had deemed his injuries “not compatible with life.” But I’d been caring for this man, as a 1:1 assignment because of his high acuity, for every shift for weeks. It seemed obvious to me that my patient’s continued presence in the ICU—and his relative stability on that particular day—directly opposed the dire predictions. The man’s family did not see his situation as hopeless, and neither did I.

And yet days after the surgeon uttered those words, my patient suffered a complication and became so unstable that for hours he teetered between life and death. The resuscitation effort was massive—and no one mentioned survivability. No one behaved like there was even a shred of futility […]

2016-11-21T13:05:28-05:00February 5th, 2014|career, nursing perspective|5 Comments
Read More

Comment ground rules

1. Please be respectful.
2. We moderate all comments.

Content disclaimer

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.
Go to Top