This morning I sipped good coffee and I read through my Facebook newsfeed. I came across several posts from a nursing group I had recently joined, and as I read the words of strangers, yet somehow not strangers, I realized I felt a familiar clinching of emotion in my throat. As I read another the building tears threatened to spill from the corners of my eyes. I swallowed an invisible lump, and I thought nursing matters.
I’m a nurse, but I’m going to be completely honest with you right now. Sometimes I wish that I wasn’t. Some weary mornings as I gather up my stethoscope and trusty scrubs I think, I just can’t do this today. Some mornings I don’t feel it, and the fatigue from my own family obligations and personal circumstances make me certain I don’t have what it takes to enter the doors of my critical care unit. The idea of being completely responsible for another person’s life and the knowledge that I must be on point to prevent possible negative outcomes is absolutely daunting.
Other days, severely long days, end and I think, I’m not cut out for this! After hours of off and on code blues, when the weight of the stress and responsibility crashes down on me after thirteen hours on my feet I wonder if I made the right decision when I decided to become a nurse.
I remember when I first dreamed of becoming a nurse. It seems odd that it came with my mother’s tears, but as I watched proudly while she cried I thought perhaps I had found my calling too. She had just returned from an accident scene, an “off-duty” RN working fervently to stop the bleeding from an eleven year old girl’s complete leg amputation after a motor boat accident. As she described her efforts to locate the severed artery all while calmly reassuring and updating a frantic family around her, I watched her tears she finally gave permission to flow, and I thought, I want to be like her. I want to make a difference.
Many weekends when I work I break away for lunch, and while in the cafeteria I will run into an older, male ER nurse. I’ll cheerfully say hello, and ask questions like, “y’all busy today?” He’ll answer in return jokingly and we’ll share friendly banter back and forth. What we don’t talk about is how he saved my mother’s life many years ago. A small, rural ER on a weekday night, and he was the top dog present. He was the nurse who gave my Momma life-giving oxygen in her lungs when she had none, and restarted her heart after it stopped. She has since passed away, but as I watch this guy on the weekends grabbing a soda and chips it doesn’t escape me that because of him I had twenty more years with my mother that I might not have had otherwise.
I think recently when derogatory comments towards nursing made by hosts of the television show The View erupted in the media many people may have been confused by our reaction. Even Michelle Collins herself tweeted surprise that nurses seemed capable of the feelings we had about it. I think she might have even said we should “take a Valium and relax.” I think some people in the community thought nurses were overreacting, and while a great many supported us, still others just didn’t get it.
The thing is nurses possess a passion that many can’t understand, and I suppose that’s okay. Yet that passion, that determination is what helps make nurses into the men and women they must be to perform the job they do day in and day out. It’s that passion that carries me to work on the days when I’m “not feeling it” or brings me back after a particularly difficult shift.
The passion of nursing is what makes a woman pulled from a family picnic hold a gushing femoral artery closed until EMS arrives, or an ER nurse fiercely determined to give a young daughter back her momma for a couple of more decades.
The cold hard fact is that nursing is hard, really hard, and it’s not just on national TV that nurses are persecuted. They are verbally, mentally, and physically abused on the front lines on a daily basis. The expectations put on them are extremely unrealistic most times, and the demeaning treatment from others is a crying shame. Yet nurses love what they do, and that passion to help others and make a difference drives them forward.
Nursing matters, and most everyone will admit to being positively impacted by someone in its ranks. And as I read stories from fellow nursing professionals this morning I was reminded of that. I was reminded that we are strong, we are proud, and we make huge impacts on a daily basis with the lives we touch by simply “doing our job.”
I went ahead and I let the tears fall. I’m proud of my profession, and even though others may sometimes oppose me it will not change why I do what I do. Some people may never understand the passion or what it actually takes to be a nurse, but that’s okay. We’ll take care of them too. In the end, nursing matters, and I’m honored to be a part of something so noble as that.
*Please feel free to share a personal story below in the comments of how nursing has positively impacted your life or your family. Let’s show nursing that it matters.
Melissa F. says
Brie, I literally got home from my 12 hour shift on a med-surg floor and told my husband “I don’t know if nursing is for me”. Then to see this post from you, I know God gave you these encouraging words for me tonight. I love my job, but some days (like today) I wonder why I chose this profession, and then God shows me time and time again little reminders of why I do it and I know he’s called me to do it. I absolutely love reading your posts, I look forward to them everyday because I feel like I can relate to you in so many ways. Please keep it up!!!
brieann.rn@gmail.com says
Thank you so much for commenting this. God bless you.
Dawn says
I work on a busy Med-Surg unit and some days I wonder how much longer I can keep doing this? Some days it is so overwhelming that you are given much more than any one person can possibly do. It is a continual list of priorities that you are going over in your mind…. knocking them off one by one. I don’t mind being busy that is what makes a 12 hour shift pass, but I love to be able to give great care to my patients too! I love nursing and it is truly a ministry. I see patients on some of their worst days, and I get to tell them how Jesus cares for them and HE can help them carry their load. It is great when you get the chance to make a difference in a patient’s life and you are forever connected to them. The love of people keeps drawing me back to nursing… I can do this even if I have to convince myself one hour at a time!
brieann.rn@gmail.com says
Thank you so much for commenting and sharing!