A Nurse in Progress

     An interesting thing about nursing, it's something that you become and that becomes you.  My experiences in nursing have changed and shaped me both personally and professionally.

     I have always loved patient care, the one on one interaction with the patient.  The team work that is involved in caring for the patient that includes physicians, staff nursed, social services and spiritual care.  The constant running from one crisis to another, trying to assuage the emotional needs of the patients and their families, keeping track of my staff, and answering the phone at the nurses station that never seems to stop ringing, but it was this stress and craziness that kept me focused and challenged.

     I love giving patient care and the personal satisfaction of being a nurse, but there have been many times that I have left work after a twelve hour shift of running back and forth between patients rooms being yelled at, cried for, and puked on.  I gave medications to thirty patients three times during my shift, and left with an aching back, sore feet, a empty stomach and a full bladder.  And that was a good day.

     Although my role in nursing has changed from direct patient care to compliance, I still love being a nurse.
One of the great things about the nursing profession is that it has a diverse amount of possibilities.  Patient care, research nursing, maternity, legal nursing, quality assurance, risk management and many more.

     Nursing is an intensive educational feat.  Anyone who has gone to nursing school can appreciate this statement.  If you can make it through nursing school with your sanity intact and your family doesn't hate you ( nurses will understand) then you have accomplished one of the hardest and most intense educational programs that a person can endure,after all, education is the foundation of the beautiful task of helping keep patients alive and moving them toward wellness or being there beside them and giving comfort care in their last days and hours of their life.

     I have been shaped and changed, both professionally and personally, by my experiences in nursing and have come to realize that a nurse is not something I became, it became me.