Thoughts on Nursing.

Nursing care is the reason someone is admitted to the hospital. If you only needed Doctor care, you would go to your MD's office, and be cared for. If you need more care than a Doc can provide in the office, you go to the hospital, because what you are really in need of is nursing care. It is a coin, patient care. It has an obverse and a reverse. Docs provide patient cure, nurses provide patient care. You can't have one without the other. What hospital RNs do is start the IV, draw the blood, give the meds, monitor the electrolytes and other lab values, monitor vital signs, notify the doc with lab/patient changes, provide educational and emotional support to patients and families, bathe the patient, do dressing changes, consult with social workers to make sure said patient has sufficient discharge support, call in ancillary departments should the patient need respiratory therapy or physical therapy, and if all else fails, run the code when the patient arrests in one fashion or another. That sentence alone would make you think that nurses are important. Cause when mama goes into the hospital, she will depend on her nurse. Not her RT. Not her PT. Maybe not even her Doc. But truly, the quality of her hospital stay will hinge on her nurse. I wear a stupid, goofy button that says "Nursing Excellence. I believe." 'Nuff said.

Mistake-Guy, that I recently dated, referred to nurses as "stupid nurses" more than once. That rocked my world. I am not yet over it, partially because I asked a doc that likes me tons, who respects me, and whom I really respect, about a blurb I read in a medical journal about doctors' true feelings concerning nurses (so not good). He told me that when he was a resident in NY, even the ICU nurses were severely limited in their scope of practice and therefore, docs just kind of discounted nurses. Discount the nurse. Discount the very person that is in charge of keeping the patient alive. What I do is important, and sometimes life and death important. Yet in my workplace, there are people who minimalize what I do. There are more than a few people who use the words "dumb" and "nurse" in the same phrase. It leaves me dumbfounded.

Last week was Nurses' Week. At my hospital, we were not cherished or celebrated. We were encouraged to give to several charities. No lunch, no trinket, no confirmation of the importance of nurses to the hospital. It wasn't in the budget, and nursing is always the biggest cost center in a hospital. I love what I do. I am always an advocate for my patients, in whatever form that takes. But the love for what I do may not be able to withstand the despair I am beginning to feel. I am not a stupid, expendable nurse. I may be the only one to believe that, tho. What I do is important, and what I do counts. I am one of the backbones of my unit. If I feel this way, well, how do the less experienced RNs feel?

Oh, I ran today. My foot is killing me and I am getting a blister in the right arch. Geez.

Total: 8 miles
Total for week: 11 miles.