The Bologna Blog

Being a nurse

Nursing is an interesting lifestyle. It will wear you down emotionally and physically.Your butt drags at the end of a shift. You are sometimes left feeling like a failure at accomplishing the basic tenants of being a nurse. This may be due to staffing, unexpected hospital events (trauma or behavioral issues of a patient). or an overload of tasks that need to be completed in any given shift.It may sound like I;m complaining but I am not. In reality. every crazy night makes me want to back and do a better job than the shift before. It reminds me to focus on the need to separate the illness from the patient and to listen to them better. Stomping out fires is important but so too is the need to spend time with the non-complainers, the patients who say, "oh I don't want to bother you. Just when you get time.could you?" These people often get pushed to the back of the line unintentionally. These are the people that cause my heart to break when I leave work feeling as if I haven't done all that i could for all of my patients. These are the people that thank me and apologize because my night looked horrendous. They are also the reason I continue to do the job that I do.

So when my my job gets me down, I remember the many wonderful people that I have encountered, the many things that I do well, and the nights that I made a difference. i also love the fact that there has never been a night that went exactly the same as the night before, because I have never heard that being a nurse is boring. Thinking on your feet and expecting the unexpected keeps the job challenging but rewarding.