Healthcare Hero, but Not Superhuman

Nurses. There is a lot of talk about us lately. This is good and frankly, about time. We are necessary. We are smart. We are skilled. We are brave. We are compassionate

We aren’t super heroes.

Nursing is one of the most human professions possible. I appreciate the superhero love, I’m definitely a Wonder Woman fan (who pretended to be a nurse in one story line and looked fab doing it), but the woman I look to as my inspiration, wore a different type of cape. Florence Nightingale wrote that “every woman must at some time or other of her life, become a nurse.” She wrote a whole book (Notes on Nursing) trying to share her Nursing knowledge with those women, so as to better take care of self, family and friends. That may surprise you, since nursing has been elevated to such an elite club in the public eye. And yes, it does take highly educated and trained people to be a nurse in 2020. The core of being a nurse is not being able to calculate a heparin drip or start an IV, it’s looking beyond the medical treatment plan and seeing the person. We ask ourselves different types of questions, as we assess our patients. What is it that will help that person, in that bed, get better? How can we work with that person, to change behaviors or environment, to keep them well in the future. How can we teach the caregivers (I include men in this too) to provide a healing environment and the skills needed to care for their loved one? How do we comfort a dying person and help the entire family support each other in saying goodbye?

Nursing is first and foremost about people. I hope that never changes.

Thank you to all the professional nurses in my life who have taught me, worked alongside me and cared for me. Thank you also, to the people in my life who have nursed me when I’ve been too ill to care for myself, especially my mother Susan and my husband Sam. Florence would be proud of you.

Happy Nurses Day, Week, Month and Year. ??