Who Am I? I Am Your Nurse...

I welcome a new life into the world,

And with dignity and respect, I farewell the life departing.

I fight the battles of the stubborn, non beating hearts,

And I calm the waves of the intricately turmoiled brain.

I clean your wounds so your skin can heal,

and wipe your tears as I attempt to comfort your broken heart.

I breath for you;

When your lungs are too stubborn to inhale that beautiful breath of life.

I suck the blood from your body into myriads of tubes,

So that I can help solve the mystery of your painful symptoms.

I transfuse blood into the frail body,

as I quench the thirst of a fragile, but still beating heart.

I poke and prod with needles so I can ease your pain with medications;

And I sooth and comfort you when an undesired diagnosis is confirmed.

I skip my lunch to feed you yours;

I rub your back as my own back aches.

I lift you in your bed to make you comfortable;

My body dreaming of my own bed, neglected and empty tonight.

I search for a chair so your family can sit at your side.

As I position your feet up, I yearn to rest my own throbbing legs.

You are annoyed that I haven’t gotten you your water yet.

But I am next door compressing the heart of another human battling for life.

You are angry because of the long wait.

I am angry because of the lifeless body I was unable to save.

I leave after 12 hours,haunted by tasks or documentation I may have forgotten.

I come for my next 12 hours, anxious that I will be able to provide all the care your body needs.

I live with hope that each day my actions will extend a life.

I dread the straight lines, the codes, and all the lives that slip out of my reach.

I get spat on, yelled at, vomited on and pooped on.

Yet, tenderly clean your gaping wound, as I wash you with respect and treat you with dignity.

I speak with you and try to make you laugh with some mindless banter;

Hoping to distract you from the dread that overwhelms your frail mind, and battered heart.

I hanker for an extra moment to spend time with you;

To get to know the person hiding under the oversized hospital gown, so I can better tend to your needs.

Each day my purpose is to give and maintain the life of others;

My own life beats with desire to keep yours in this world.

My days are a hazy kaleidoscope of endless but life changing tasks;

My night are consumed by regrets for the lives that slipped me by, and the dangling lives I will need to catch and patch up tomorrow.

Everyday I fight the battle of life and evade that angel of death.

I live each day to pump life into the hearts of the living and farewell the lives ending.

Who are you?

You are a brave being fighting the battles that threatens that wonderful gift of life.

Who am I?

I am your nurse; your advocate, your cleaner, your stress ball, your needle poker, your pain med giver, heart beater, your chest compressor, your comforter, your turner, your voice, your feeder, your shoulder to cry on, and i'm your person for whatever else you need.

I am all yours; I help you fight the battle of the living and I dignify the journey of the dying.

Happy Nurses Week to all of you, who are like "I"!

From Preceptor to Precepted; The Leap Into Sinking Waters Only To Rise Higher;

Have you ever jumped off a diving board into deep waters? That high jump pulls you so low down, yet you hold your breath and eventually come back up. The higher the jump the lower you can sink into the waves, but you still come back to rise above the waters.

I took my first jump in July 2013, on my first day as a new nurse. That petrifying, green, yet super exciting morning is etched in my brain. I had my lunch and bag packed from the night before, my alarm clock was set for a time too early and a notebook and pen were neatly secured together with my shiny new ID badge. I replay  that day almost 3 years into my nursing career, with my not so shiny ID badge and my not so new green scrubs; but an alarm clock set to a time way before any signs of daytime begin to release hints of arrival, and an orientation folder, pen and notebook ready for a 'novice’s' use.

I remember dreaming of the day that I will go to work and not be anxious about what the days will bring. Every day as a new nurse I wished to skip time, to be the 'expert'. The time had moved faster than I had anticipated, and soon I felt that comfort and leisure to show up to work and feel that even the unexpected would be manageable.

Soon I was charge nurse and preceptor; I was training and giving direction to the overwhelmed new hires. Many were older than me, but little nurse D with her curly hair and crazy glasses, who called herself a 'striving novice'; was considered an “expert” in their eyes. I soon realized I was veering towards an expert with comfortable limitations. I was an expert within the solace of my surroundings, and expert to the specific population of medical and surgical cases that managed to leak into the few beds of my little step-down surgical unit. My expertise were confined to the few cases I was presented with each day, those that were qualified to be managed on this particular unit. I soon realized that my abilities to learn and grow were restricted by the glass ceiling that limited what I could become good at. And so as a “Striving Novice”, it was time to move on to the next challenge.

Now, I have taken another leap, this time a deeper leap. Thus, I am once again the new person. I must introduce myself again, learn the names of the hundreds of nurses, doctors, physician assistants, patient care technicians and other staff who keep the nonstop hustle of the ER running each day and night. I have to learn new policies, new codes to the doors, and where the secret stash of peanut butter packets are kept. I used to look over the charting of my preceptees and now my charting is looked at and corrected by my preceptor. In my humbling transition and retraction back as the “New Girl”, I am once again learning the gold standard, understanding the woes of being new at a task and relearning how to ask for help and direction. Now, once again, I dream of racing the clock of endurance through this tough climb, to become an expert ER nurse, wishing I can skip time and just be there.

Sometimes it is hard to take the initial leap (especially when your current position is so comfortable), to jump in and sink only for a few seconds until you can rise up, take a breath, and reach onto even greater heights than where you began the initial jump. With my youth, my energy, my passion, and with the sponge I call my brain; I am sinking into the waters of endless codes, strokes, funky EKG rhythms, children struggling to breath, 20 gauge IVs, running after homeless  and unsteady patients, taming the impatient, making new friends, keeping up with my school grades...and the overwhelming waves tackle me on.

I hold my breath as I sink, just enough to plunge myself right back up; because I know this jump will land me on a higher dry land, back to the struggle to remain a "novice" in the field I will practice. So I have taken my leap, and now I hold my breath so I can rise high with new knowledge, speed, confidence, and skill to save more lives that come my way.

Nurse D, with her curly bun and big glasses has taken a leap, but only after getting promoted to 'Nurse Clinician'. #NewNurseTitle #NewIDBadge #NurseClinician #EmergencyDepartment #ProjectERNurseD