January More Voices: Nursing

Dear readers,

When I was thirty years old and in my first year of medical school, I came down with symptoms–extreme thirst and frequent urination–that turned out to be type 1 diabetes, formerly known as juvenile onset. My body wasn’t producing any insulin, and I was hospitalized.

During my five-day stay, I had to make some adjustments and learn a few things. The biggest adjustment was this: I had to accept that without insulin injections, I would die and that unless I controlled my blood sugar well, I could suffer all kinds of serious complications from diabetes–and then die.

The people who eased my way into this new life were nurses.

A nurse, Nora, gave me my first insulin injections and showed me how to do it myself. She also taught me how to stick my fingers to check my blood sugars.

The nurses were kind. They had a sense of humor. They made me feel cared for–and gave me confidence that I could do this new thing and take care of myself.

Their skill, their attitude and their presence mattered a lot. When I had questions, they were there. The day my blood sugar plummeted as I was waiting for lunch, they took care of me.

I was incredibly grateful to them.

In my early years of clinical training, nurses continued to be my teachers. They knew where the supply cabinet was. They knew how to avoid contaminating things in the OR. They knew a thing or two about comforting distressed patients. They knew who among them was a master at putting in a difficult IV. And nurse midwives knew everything there was to know about delivering babies.

I always got along well with nurses, and during my first year of residency it surprised me when fellow interns would complain about them. I suspected that the interns who got awakened in the middle of the night for Tylenol orders that could have waited until morning were probably interns who’d set nurses off by displaying touches of arrogance .

Later on, as an attending, I was struck that doctors and nurses didn’t work more closely together. In a hospital setting, I would reach out to nurses, ask for their observations and touch base about urgent changes in plans, but when I rounded with our team of residents, we rounded without nurses. And when nurses rounded, they rounded among themselves, without doctors.

It was weird–working in two separate silos, pursuing the same goal, without formally collaborating, without sitting down together at planned times and without sharing our perceptions as often as we might have.

Medicine’s hierarchical nature didn’t help. Instead of fostering collaborative partnerships between doctors and nurses, the hierarchy encourages doctors to think of themselves as bosses rather than team players, and it produces nurses who have to deal with that.

January’s More Voices theme is Nursing. What’s your experience of nursing–as a nurse, as a patient being cared for by nurses or as someone who works with nursing colleagues?

Share your story using the More Voices Submission Form. For more details, visit More Voices FAQs. And have a look at last month’s theme: House Calls and Home Care.

Remember, your story should be 40-400 words. And no poetry, please.

We look forward to hearing from you. And thanks for being a part of the Pulse community.

Warmly,

Paul Gross
Editor