Are We Hearing the Questions that Patients and Their Families Don’t Ask?

“The spoken and unspoken messages we give patients and families are powerful.”

Viewpoint author Juanita Reigle

As a ‘frequent flyer’ of late, accompanying a family member on the long trek through cancer treatment, I’m acutely aware of the ways in which doctors and nurses communicate with us. Some have never mastered the art of interacting with people in stressful conditions. Others have remarkable radar and a special ability to “read between the lines,” identifying concerns that he and I haven’t yet voiced.

In ‘She’s Fine,’ the Viewpoint essay in AJN’s October issue, Juanita Reigle reflects upon how we respond to the questions patients and family members don’t raise. Some are left unasked because people are too overwhelmed to formulate a question. Some people aren’t ready to hear the answers. And sometimes, sadly, families sense that this doctor or nurse really doesn’t want to engage with them.

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2017-10-09T09:48:08-04:00October 9th, 2017|Nursing, patient experience, Patients|0 Comments
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When Brokenness Transforms Nursing

photo by Karen Roush/all rights reserved

I’ve had opportunities to sit in peer interview panels for new grad nurses looking to start their career in our unit, an experience which prompted me to consider what it takes to be a good nurse.

The obvious qualities were, well, obvious: critical thinking skills, strong communication, compassion, teachable, team player. But I’ve had a sense for a while that we nurses have been missing something when we consider what it takes to be a good nurse. While this something is strongly tied to empathy, it’s still a bit different. I tend to think of it as the nurse’s recognition and embrace of his/her own brokenness, even as the nurse looks to take care of others who are in some manner broken.

By brokenness, if the term is unfamiliar, I simply mean the awareness that we all know what it is to suffer, to struggle, to feel lost or wounded or weak. So in speaking of brokenness, I don’t mean it as a condescending lens through which we view everyone as objects to be fixed. I use the term brokenness to acknowledge the humbling reality that every person will crack a bit under enough pressure; every person who has been tossed […]

2018-01-18T10:03:17-05:00August 9th, 2017|Nursing, nursing perspective|4 Comments
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The Inner Stretch of Nursing

There is a level of discomfort nurses are pushed to that goes beyond tight staffing, busy 12-hour shifts, and mental tracking of our patient’s disease process. It is the inner stretch of our emotional, relational, and spiritual muscles. We are pushed to wrestle with questions and issues beyond what we find comfortable, and then we must learn to live with a certain unresolved level of discomfort. We can’t go back to a perhaps safe naïveté about life as we knew it before we saw how indiscriminate some forms of suffering and death could be. Our own theological wonderings come to light, and our capacity for vulnerability and intimacy is tested when certain patients find a way past the self-protective walls we put up. Sometimes, all the big questions of life loom over us in the course of one 12-hour shift.

We are stretched in how we think about quality of life.

My everyday thoughts about quality of life usually revolve around the quality of my relationships, how much free time I had to enjoy my hobbies, what delicious food or special coffee treat I might enjoy today, how much traffic I encountered, and whether my kids seem to have everything they need. I’ve had my share of personal trials and tribulation, but overall I live a life […]

2018-01-18T10:06:13-05:00July 14th, 2017|Nursing|4 Comments
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The Speed of Patience: Notes On Navigating Hospital Hallways

The Speed of Nurses

'She Observes,' ink on paper, 2005 by Julianna Paradisi ‘She Observes,’ ink on paper, 2005 by Julianna Paradisi

A while ago, my stepfather had surgery at the hospital where I work. After spending a long day in the waiting room, my husband and I left the post-surgery unit. As we walked down the narrow hallway towards the main lobby, a young man, his girlfriend trailing behind by the hand, came around a corner from the opposite direction too quickly. They headed towards the elevator. We narrowly avoided collision. Had either my husband or I been disabled, someone might have been injured.

As he pulled the young woman into the elevator, he sniped at us sarcastically, “I’m not rude!” Rude or not, he was obviously unfamiliar with the traffic flow of hospital hallways.

Hospital hallways accommodate two types of travelers: staff and patients/visitors. These groups travel at speeds established by urgency and limited by ability.

For nurses, getting to a patient’s room fast may mean saving a life, or simply providing an emesis basin to preserve a patient’s dignity. Among nurses, a lack of urgency (the inability to act fast) is viewed as a character flaw.

Although I am […]

2016-11-21T13:00:53-05:00October 27th, 2016|Nursing|0 Comments
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What Patients Told

By Marti Trudeau, RN, CPHQ, MPA, director, University City State Programs Office, BAYADA Home Health Care, Philadelphia

ky olsen/via Flickr ky olsen/via Flickr

I was anxious as I arrived at Mr. Johnson’s house. He was my first centenarian patient. He lived alone, taught Sunday school, and had no ailments. He didn’t need help, but his family thought he should occasionally have a nurse visit. After assessing this healthy man, I asked him, “What has helped you live so long?”

Surely he’d been asked this question many times, yet he thoughtfully answered, “Every morning I wake up, drink a large glass of water, then look in the mirror and smile.”

“You drink a glass of water?” I responded.

“Listen to what I said, sweetie,” he answered.

I recall this because when patients called me “sweetie,” I would say, “Please do not call me sweetie, and feel free to call me Marti.” But I didn’t say anything to Mr. Johnson. I figured that at 101 years of age he could call me anything.

Weaving through my mind as I left were the words, “Every morning . . . water . . . ” Thus began my habit of drinking a large glass of water each morning—not exactly what he recommended, but what I heard at the time.

Through the years, patients told me […]

2016-11-21T13:00:54-05:00October 7th, 2016|Nursing, patient engagement, patient experience, Patients|2 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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