The Quixotic Nurse

As a nurse writer and blogger, I often use metaphor as a way to express deeper ideas about nursing and healthcare. In the past, I've explored the myths of Sisyphus and Hercules as they relate to nurses and the nursing profession, and my nature continues to point me towards metaphor as a tool for understanding. I've recently been considering the figure of Don Quixote as another metaphor related to our often beleaguered profession; although much has been written about Quixote and the author Miguel Cervantes, I don't believe anything has been written about the potentially quixotic nature of nurses. So, my friends, I give you the notion of "The Quixotic Nurse".(Note: this post is much longer than my usual 500-600 words. Please bear with me and consider this long-form post as a necessary means to my desired literary end.)Few of us (myself included) have ever actually read the entire story of Don Quixote, with the majority of us understanding the story from the viewpoint of cultural reference and a lackadaisical reading of Cliff Notes during a sleepy high school English class. If we've encountered the story, we probably know little, but we readily understand that Quixote was a man who imagined himself to be a chivalrous knight of old, frequently mistaking windmills for monsters in need of vanquishing. His faithful sidekick, Sancho Panza, was a simple peasant farmer who served as his squire, and they wandered the hills of Spain in search of Dulcinea, a woman whom Quixote felt was in...
Source: Digital Doorway - Category: Nursing Tags: Don Quixote Erin Brockovich Florence Nightingale health care healthcare delivery healthcare policy Mahatma Gandhi Martin Luther King nurse nurse bullying nurses nursing Renee Thompson Source Type: blogs