cruisincruzan
Ute's Chauffeur
Sorry for the length of the post but nurses deserve it.
Today starts National Nurses Week, if you're a nurse pat yourself on the back, if you know a nurse say thanks. Today is my last day of a 39 year career in Emergency Medicine, most of them as a Medical Director. In my specialty the bond that develops between the nursing and medical staffs is unique in medicine. The level of trust, camaraderie, mutual support allows high quality care in very difficult circumstances.
The past 2+ years have been the most difficult years of my career, and like many others accelerated my retirement. During these times our nurses, like so many others, worked in overcrowded, isolated conditions, with a new disease where information and recommendations were frequently changing. Through sheer dedication to the idea of making a patient feel better they kept coming to work, despite an increasingly hostile patient population, being assaulted for the simple question of your vaccination history, being coughed and spit on by patients who felt they were demonstrating what was best about being American and exercising their rights to not participate in the worst infectious disease crisis in my career. Yet they kept coming to work.
Abraded skin from working in full PPE for days on end became the new badge of courage. When visitation was curtailed, nurses not only provided bedside care but often were the "family equivalent" offering comfort, commonly when patients were sickest. My department quickly became so overcrowded we placed beds in hallways outside of the ED, housing more patients in the ED waiting for inpatient beds then existed on any inpatient unit, but they still came to work.
I am proud to have worked with my nurses, every day they amazed me with their dedication, humor, support, professionalism and expertise. Whatever success I've achieved I owe to them. Say thanks to a nurse, you'll feel better.
Today starts National Nurses Week, if you're a nurse pat yourself on the back, if you know a nurse say thanks. Today is my last day of a 39 year career in Emergency Medicine, most of them as a Medical Director. In my specialty the bond that develops between the nursing and medical staffs is unique in medicine. The level of trust, camaraderie, mutual support allows high quality care in very difficult circumstances.
The past 2+ years have been the most difficult years of my career, and like many others accelerated my retirement. During these times our nurses, like so many others, worked in overcrowded, isolated conditions, with a new disease where information and recommendations were frequently changing. Through sheer dedication to the idea of making a patient feel better they kept coming to work, despite an increasingly hostile patient population, being assaulted for the simple question of your vaccination history, being coughed and spit on by patients who felt they were demonstrating what was best about being American and exercising their rights to not participate in the worst infectious disease crisis in my career. Yet they kept coming to work.
Abraded skin from working in full PPE for days on end became the new badge of courage. When visitation was curtailed, nurses not only provided bedside care but often were the "family equivalent" offering comfort, commonly when patients were sickest. My department quickly became so overcrowded we placed beds in hallways outside of the ED, housing more patients in the ED waiting for inpatient beds then existed on any inpatient unit, but they still came to work.
I am proud to have worked with my nurses, every day they amazed me with their dedication, humor, support, professionalism and expertise. Whatever success I've achieved I owe to them. Say thanks to a nurse, you'll feel better.
