Yesterday I overheard a nursing student snark, “Yeah, this is why I’m in nursing school — so I can pass trays.†And if I hadn’t been up to my eyeballs in other things to do for my patients, I would have stopped and said: You’ve already missed the point entirely. I’m not sure why you DO think you’re here.
If you hope to be a good nurse (or coworker, or person with a heart), you’re going to spend the majority of your working life doing things you SO mistakenly think are beneath you. You are going to pass trays with a smile — excitement even, when your patient finally gets to try clear liquids. You will even open the milk and butter the toast and cut the meat. You will feed full-grown adults from those trays, bite by tedious, hard to swallow bite. You will, at times, get your own vital signs or glucoscans, empty Foley bags and bedside commodes without thinking twice. You will reposition the same person, move the same three pillows 27 times in one shift because they can’t get comfortable. You will not only help bathe patients, but wash and dry between the toes they can’t reach. Lotion and apply deodorant. Scratch backs. Nystatin powder skin folds. Comb hair. Carefully brush teeth and dentures. Shave an old man’s wrinkled face. Because these things make them feel more human again.
You will NOT delegate every “code brown,†and you will handle them with a mix of grace and humor so as not to humiliate someone who already feels quite small. You will change ostomy appliances and redress infected and necrotic wounds and smell smells that stay with you, and you will work hard not to show how disgusted you may feel because you will remember that this person can’t walk away from what you have only to face for a few moments.
You will fetch ice and tissues and an extra blanket and hunt down an applesauce when you know you don’t have time to. You will listen sincerely to your patient vent when you know you don’t have time to. You will hug a family member, hear them out, encourage them, bring them a cup of coffee the way they like it, answer what you may feel are “stupid†questions — twice even — when you don’t have time to.
You won’t always eat when you’re hungry or pee when you need to, because there is usually something more important to do. You’ll be aggravated by Q2 narcotics pushes, but keenly aware that the person who requires them is far more put upon.
You will navigate unbelievably messy family dramas, and you will be griped at for things you have no control over, and be talked down to, and you will remain calm and respectful (although you will surely say what you really felt to your coworkers later), because you will try your best to stay mindful of the fact that while this is your everyday, it’s this patient or family’s high-stress situation, a potential tragedy in the making.
Many days you won’t feel like doing any of these things, but you will shelve your own feelings and do them the best you can anyway.
HIPAA will prevent you from telling friends, family and Facebook what your work is really like. They’ll guess based off what ridiculousness Gray’s Anatomy and the like make of it, and you’ll just have to haha at the poop and puke jokes.
But your coworkers will get it, the way this work of nursing fills and breaks, fills and breaks your heart. Fellow nurses, doctors, NPs and PAs, CNAs and PCAs, unit clerks, phlebotomists, respiratory therapists, physical and occupational therapists, speech therapists, transport, radiology, telemetry, pharmacy techs, lab, even dietary and housekeeping — it’s a team sport. And you’re not set above the rest as captain. You will see you need each other, not just to complete the obvious tasks, but to laugh and cry and laugh again about these things only someone else who’s really been there can understand.
You will see clearly that critical thinking about and careful delivery of medications are only part of the very necessary care you must provide. Blood gushing adrenaline-pumping code blue ribs breaking beneath your CPR hands moments are also part, but they’re not what it’s all about.
The “little†stuff is rarely small. It’s heavy and you can’t carry it by yourself. So yes, little nursling, you are here to pass trays.
This originally appeared as a Facebook status.
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Also on The Huffington Post:
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Compassionate people know what it’s like to be down on their luck, and they keep those experiences in mind to develop a more empathetic nature, whether through volunteering or just simply networking. “Compassionate people are very outward-focused because they think and feel about other people,†Firestone says. “They have that ability to feel others’ feelings, so they’re very socially connected.â€
And turns out, there’s science behind why we feel compassion toward people who have been in our same boat. In one small study, researchers found that humans’ sense of compassion actually increases when there’s a common connection with the other person. “What these results suggest is that the compassion we feel for others is not solely a function of what befalls them: if our minds draw an association between a victim and ourselves — even a relatively trivial one — the compassion we feel for his or her suffering is amplified greatly,†study researcher and Northeastern University psychology professor David DeSteno, Ph.D., wrote in The New York Times.
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If money doesn’t buy happiness, then according to studies from the University of California, Berkeley, it doesn’t buy compassion, either. In one study, researchers found that as someone grew in social class, his or her compassion for others declined. The findings support previous research that showed that a higher social class also negatively influences a person’s ability to pay attention in interactions wither other people, Scientific American reported.
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Firestone says a major component of compassion is giving back, even in the smallest ways. “When we take actions that are caring and loving, we feel more love in return,†she explains. This is why compassionate people act on their kindness, whether it’s through volunteering or just being a shoulder to lean on — and overall they’re much happier for it. “If you’re going after happiness, you don’t get as happy as you would if you’re going after generosity,†she says. “A hedonistic way of pursuing happiness really doesn’t work for most people.â€
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“Self-compassion is actually really, really key to becoming a more compassionate person overall,†Firestone explains. “It’s hard to feel for other people something we don’t feel for ourselves.â€
Practicing self-love, which Firestone says is a little different than self-esteem, is also crucial to beating bad habits in other aspects of our lives. “We often think the way to change bad behaviors is to beat ourselves up,†Firestone says. “But self-compassion is actually the first step in changing any behavior you want to change.†And there’s science to back it up: According to a study from the University of California, Berkeley, those who practice self-compassion are more motivated to improve themselves and go for their goals.
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Compassionate people don’t want to just keep their gifts to themselves, they want to impart their knowledge onto other people. As motivational speaker and author Jen Groover notes, it’s this desire that lies in the root of all empathetic habits. “True compassion exists when you give your strength, guidance and wisdom to empower another so that you can see who you really are and live in a greater capacity and expect nothing in return,†she wrote. “True grace exists when the ‘teachers’ realize that the gift was really theirs — to be able to teach another.â€
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When you’re exercising compassion, you’re putting yourself in the moment. Compassionate people aren’t listening and checking their smartphones at the same time — they’re present, offering their empathetic response to the story right in front of them.
This awareness is crucial to compassion because it allows you to really focus on others rather than your own reflections. “Mindfulness allows us to develop a different relationship to our feelings,†Firestone explains. “Feelings or thoughts may come up, but with mindfulness we can sort of see them as clouds floating by. Not getting caught up in our thoughts is really helpful.â€
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Individuals who are tapped into their own compassion also seem to be tapped into their own emotions. “It’s partly … being able to see what’s going on in your mind and other people’s minds,†Firestone explains. “I think when we can do that we have more compassion toward other people.â€
When you’re emotionally intelligent, you also have a greater sense of morality and you genuinely try to help others — which are all crucial components of empathy. Compassionate people “understand that other people have a sovereign mind that sees the world differently than you do — and one isn’t right and one isn’t wrong,†Firestone says.
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“Doing things that light us up and make us feel good — people think of that as being selfish, but often that leads us to better behavior toward other people,†Firestone says. One way to do that is to count the positives.
Whether or not you’ve committed a lot of compassionate acts in your life, chances are you’ve been on the receiving end at least once or twice. Empathetic individuals not only acknowledge those acts of kindness done unto them, they actively express gratitude for them. “Just thinking about our gratitude for other people makes us feel happy,†Firestone says. “And it’s slowing down and expressing those types of things that makes us more caring and loving.â€