How many times a year are you cared for a by a nurse? If you are a caregiver, how many times a year does a nurse play an important role in the care of your loved one?
1. Nursing School is NOT Easy
There are so many nurses in the world that it is easy to believe that nursing school must be a piece of cake. I can tell you from experience that it isn't. I'm pretty sure that by the 7th week of nursing school, every single student in my class of 40 had cried for one reason or another.
And we aren't talking about just the girls either. Or even just the students who scraped by with average grades Many of us (myself included) were very smug about our reputations as overachievers and our 4.0 GPAs. We quickly learned that it is about so much more than grades. Its about grit, which can't be measured by any paper test. You can have great grades, and still get blessed out by your professors.
A good dose of humility is handed out to everyone in nursing school early on, which is a great reason to appreciate nurses. They face outrageous class loads, merciless instructors, sleepless nights, multiple tests per day, hostile clinical environments...and tons of math. Sometimes they do this while working full time and caring for a family. And those who come out on the other side do so without a broken spirit.
They still come out wanting to help others.
2, Nurses Don't Get Paid Well
Sometimes a nurse with years of experience or multiple degrees will land a cushy job. Most of the time though, their wages are only high compared to minimum wage jobs. And there is a lot of work involved to earn those extra couple of dollars.
Not nearly enough to make up for all the exposure to disease, infection, aggression and workplace drama that they face. And unlike YOUR workplace drama, which may just cause tension, a little drama in the medical world can lead to a wrongfully revoked license, a loss of reputation, a serious injury, or even death.
Nurses who work in nursing homes can often find themselves being paid a lot less than nurses in hospitals. At the same time, they may work alone, overseeing a number of aides and a multitude of residents. They spend hours crunched between unhappy relatives, residents and aides on one side, and unhappy superiors, and corporate bosses on the other side.
3. Good Nurses Have to Deal With Bad Nurses and Doctors
There is always an understanding between people who work in the same career field. But that doesn't mean that all nurses like each other. In fact, they may cringe when they have to work with a bad nurse. A bad nurse isn't the same as a bad fast food worker. You aren't talking about burnt fries or some miscounted change...a bad nurse can cost someone their life.
That means that every good nurse is responsible for watching her colleagues closely, which can be pretty exhausting on top of a twelve hour shift filled with her own responsibilities. Plus, nurses have to deal with doctors too.
In many cases, a nurse is responsible for catching a doctor if he makes a mistake. Talk about pressure! We were taught that doctors were busy people and if they didn't have time to read a chart, and wrote the wrong prescription, it would be our job to correct him.
So, essentially, a nurse is doing the doctor's work too. But not getting paid as much. And he runs the risk of being fired, reprimanded or punished in some way for confronting the physician. On the other hand, the nurse could lose his license if he DOESN'T catch the error.
4. Nurses Get Injured. A Lot
Forget that cute idea you have of the pretty nurse bustling about a room, checking vitals, and scribbling in a chart while talking sympathetically to a patient. She is playing the role of Angel of Mercy, and the patient is the martyr, enduring his pain while following all instructions to the letter.
In reality, nurses get injured quite often. Usually this is from dealing with patients who are aggressive. I've never met a nurse yet that didn't have a good supply of stories about physical, emotional or verbal abuse from patients.
It isn't just physical injuries either, although there are plenty of those. There are some patients that are just plain mean for no reason. Nurses who have worked in hospitals have had their share of bodily fluids thrown at them deliberately, exposing them to a variety of diseases. Despite their best precautions, nurses live in constant fear of taking home something contagious to spread to their families.
One of my charge nurses showed us a scar on her arm. At one time in her career, a patient had hidden a fork in his blanket. When she told him she couldn't give him any more painkillers until the doctor approved the orders, he stabbed her in the arm with the fork.
Another nurse had been stabbed by an IV needle that a patient had removed from her own arm. The nurse was tested for hepatitis (which the patient had) and found positive. Her life was never the same.
There are other ways to be injured as a nurse. They can sustain back, hip, knee and shoulder injuries from lifting, transferring, transporting and catching heavy patients. They can end up with permanent conditions such as arthritis. They can also eventually develop high blood pressure, diabetes and other illnesses due to shifts that don't allow for proper eating habits.
At the very least, many nurses end up feeling burned out or depressed if they work in an area of nursing that deals with a lot of trauma or death. ER nurses, hospice nurses, pediatric nurses and burn unit nurses are a few that work in emotionally charged situations and see a lot of horror day in and day out.
5. Nurses Keep Nursing
Perhaps one of the best reasons to appreciate a nurse is that no matter how they are treated by their employers, superiors, doctors, patients and co-workers...they keep nursing. Even though they;
- Work 12 hour shifts (or more)
- Miss their kid's recitals
- Sustain permanent injuries
- Work holidays
- Stay stressed
- Skip lunch
- Rarely get a bathroom break.
- Catch every cold and flu that patient's and residents have
- Sometimes catch serious diseases and infections that ruin their lives
- Get doused in bodily fluids
- Watch helplessly as people suffer
They still keep coming back to take care of you and your loved ones. So remember to appreciate all the nurses in the world. And when you go to the doctor or the hospital next time, remember that the nurses don't make the rules, don't set the schedule, don't have any control over what the doctor says.
And above all, remember that they would LOVE to be able to do what nurses used to do before all the corporations, insurance companies and red tape took over the medical profession. Which is, do everything in their power to make you feel better.
But they can't. And sometimes, that really does hurts them as much as it hurts you.
