Nurse, Whose Shoes Are You Wearing?

As nurses, we're often in the mode of "doing". We hang IVs, check vital signs, give treatments, dole out medications, and tend to multiple tasks, whether in the hospital, nursing home, school, patients' homes, or other venues. And when we're doing those tasks, we're generally wearing our metaphoric---and literal---nursing shoes.In the midst of the tasks to which you need to tend, a patient may voice a complaint, concern, worry or anxiety. Depending on the general trajectory of your day, that patient's need can either draw you into empathic conversation, or, conversely, it can cause you stress, impatience, and exasperation. When you're busy and overwhelmed, a patient's emotional frailty may be the last thing you feel that you can handle.  In those moments of impatience or stress, you're certainly wearing your nursing shoes (the literal ones and the metaphoric ones), and although those shoes may generally come laced with compassion (pun intended), is your store of compassion always open for business? Are you always able to be as present as you'd like to be?A Choice to Make For example, say you're working on a surgical floor and you have a patient who's being prepared for surgery. You have so many things to do and so much documentation to take care of. Between the IV alarm, the I & O sheet, the other call bells that won't stop ringing, and the constant feeling that you just can't keep up, your patient begins to tell you how frightened she is. She looks at you ...
Source: Digital Doorway - Category: Nurses Tags: compassion nurse nurse-patient relationships nurses nursing Source Type: blogs