We do it for the Patients

Today is the last day of Nurses Week. I hope you’ve enjoyed the stories thus far.  One of the things that I often write and talk about is the ability of nurses to save lives. I don’t take this lightly and neither should anyone else because we could all be that patient in the bed. No one wants or  thinks he/she will be a patient but not one of us is free from that possibility in our lives.

As nurses, we know what safe care looks and feels like. We also know what it takes to provide safe care. I remember there was one night I was working (almost all my most challenging shifts occurred at night) and I had a very sick patient. He was post-op from that day and had moved out of the ICU that evening. His parents were at the bedside and so attentive to their son. I had 3 other patients in addition to him. He was not responding well to his surgery and getting sick almost every hour. I couldn’t attend to his needs or his parents’ requests for care as quickly as I wanted to because I had 3 others to care for that night.

I didn’t think that patient had the right level of care. I thought he should be in the ICU where he could be cared for by a nurse that only had 2 patients (instead of 4). While I was advocating for this, I was assigned another patient. I told the charge nurse that I couldn’t take another patient. She said I had to and I said I wouldn’t. I wouldn’t take another patient without the one who was sick being transferred to a higher level of care. We went back and forth for a while but I stood my ground and the patient who needed more attention was transferred to the ICU for closer monitoring. The parents were relieved. I was relieved. It was the right thing to do. After that transfer, I was happy to take on the additional patient. In my situation, I worked out the patient assignment with my charge nurse and the ICU however that is not always the case.

Nearly a year ago, I was introduced to a nursing advocacy group entitled, Show Me Your Stethoscope. The group, founded by Janie Garner, represents over 600,000 nurses who all collectively work to address safe, high quality care for their patients. Show Me Your Stethoscope (SMYS) supports nurses and patients in the United States and abroad through a variety of programs…too many to list here in this post! Yet, one of the most fundamental drivers of this group is their focus on ensuring patients receive safe care through appropriate staffing ratios for nurses.

SMYS rallied in DC last week to advocate for safe care and legislation for nurse staffing ratios. This was the second year that SMYS has organized and gathered over 400 nurses and health care professionals to work toward a common goal for safe patient care, regardless of the place of work. The effort and energy that went into this rally is quite remarkable. Everyone works on a volunteer basis and does so because representing their patients is a shared passion. I look forward to seeing what will result from their persistence and drive for safe care of patients and their nurses.

Prior to the rally, SMYS hosted a Patient Safety conference on May 4th in Alexandria VA. For their first conference, there were over 300 attendees. The Patient Safety conference’s focus was on advocacy for the nursing profession, their patients and themselves. Speakers included Kathleen Bartholomew, Terry Foster and Katie Duke. The group is already thinking about next year’s conference after such a positive response to this first one. To learn more about the group, you can find them here: https://www.smysofficial.com/ and on social media outlets.

Care delivery is complex. Many different health care professional groups support the care of patients. Yet nurses are the group of health care professionals that are at the patient’s bedside 24 hours a day and 7 days a week. We have research to show that there are relationships between the quality of nursing care delivery on patient health outcomes. I believe that the more we can support our nurses with optimal care environments, the more we can help support our patients for optimal health outcomes.