My seventh-grade social studies teacher posed a question: “Which professions are the most important?” We know-it-all adolescents shouted “Doctor!” “Lawyer!” “Accountant!” My teacher’s answer is seared into my memory: “Farmers, parents, teachers, nurses.” I was dumbfounded; my world paradigm shifted.
Why nurses? Medical care would collapse without nurses. I saw this as a medical resident when hospital nurses went on strike for better working conditions. Today, I see this at my clinic when we are short-staffed nurses. Which begs the question: If nurses are so essential, why are they so underpaid – and overworked?
A friend, also a physician, visited her hospitalized elderly relative recently. Her relative received better care on units where the patient-to-nurse ratio was smaller. When nurses carried a larger patient load, my friend noted, “The nurses did the best they could given the demands pulling at them.” My friend spent time at her loved one’s bedside to “advocate” for their needs. Patients without visitors risk getting less care and staff face time. What are the human and financial costs of this setup? Is it any wonder that there is a nursing shortage?
As a female medical student in the 1990s, and then as a new attending physician, patients often called me “Nurse.” When I corrected them, they apologized, as though being a nurse is a bad thing – or less worthy than being a physician. This is not so.
Nurses helped save my life several months ago when I was hospitalized with a vicious, out-of-the blue infection. The physicians dismissed my physical complaints as medication side effects, but the nurse in-training took seriously my concern that the infection was spreading. At midnight she helped get me transferred by ambulance from our local hospital to the ICU of a larger hospital in Boston. By simply listening, she provided invaluable care.
My two favorite ICU nurses had opposite personalities. The night nurse got me settled when I arrived, calmed my terror, and gave me hope. She was a magical fairy who lit up the surreal darkness of night. The day nurse was wise, witty, and missed nothing. She kept me laughing and feeling safe. She was a Mama Bear Nurse. When I recall these nurses, my heart swells and my eyes tear. I plan to visit the ICU to thank them in person, though words aren’t adequate to convey the depth of my gratitude. Their kindness is seared into my soul; they literally changed my life.
Pamela Adelstein
Newton, Massachusetts
2 thoughts on “The Night Fairy and the Mama Bear”
I was just in the hospital. The nurses were the ones who cared fot my needs. The doctor theoretically in charge of my problem only came by on discharge day. Between the doctors in ER and the room, mistakes were made nonstop. My husband stayedwith me, sleeping in a chair because he honestly felt I wasn’t safe there. One nurse was the ones who I could depend on to make sensible decisions.
Health care is structured as a caste system with physicians at the top. While I so respect all that physician do, nurses are the ones that really run the hospital and give the patients the lions share of care and reassurance. Thank you, Dr. Adelstein, for writing about this so poignantly from your own experience.