Nurses, Nursing, and the Nature of Suffering

In the course of many nurses ' healthcare careers, witnessing the illness, suffering, and death of others is commonplace. From dialysis and med-surg to home health and the ICU, nurses create therapeutic relationships with patients and their families, providing spiritual and emotional comfort, compassion, and expert skilled care based on many decades of nursing science and evidence-based interventions.Aside from witnessing the challenges faced by others, nurses are themselves human beings with their own life experiences, victories, and suffering. How a nurse navigates their own personal suffering plays a role in determining how they approach life, work, and the overlapping of the two.Photo by Samuel Martins on UnsplashLife is SufferingIn Buddhist studies, it has been said that life is suffering. I believe that this expression refers to the notion that our emotional attachment to the things that make up our lives (relationships, money, success, possessions, family) are what cause us suffering, and the ability to live in the present without grasping for what we don ' t already have can help to alleviate that suffering. In other words, our desires cause us to suffer.Aside from our attachment to things and people, there is also the reality that bad things often happen to good people -- we see children with incurable cancer, elders living alone and destitute, and many other situations that seem both untenable and patently unfair.In nursing, medicine, and healthcare, ...
Source: Digital Doorway - Category: Nursing Tags: healthcare nurse nurses nursing Source Type: blogs