The Beauty of It All

I began my new job working with long term care patients part time in town. I will continue work part time for the vein practice I've been at for the last year and a half. Let me just say that I am so incredibly busy in my life now. I thought I was busy before. My life was sitting on snooze before! I just didn't know.
I really like my new job. The patients are all total care. Most of the patients I've worked with are on a vent or have a tracheostomy. Some patients are there due to car accidents, severe stroke, failed attempts at suicide or just plain rotten health. I wondered how I would feel working with patients that were almost all in such a bad state of being. Truly it hasn't bothered me yet. After having worked in oncology, home health and acute care, I feel more adept at caring for these patients. I also know that I don't plan to dig deep into their personal lives. The less I know about them as a person (a healthy, living person) the better. My goal is to provide comfort and well being to each person to the best of my ability. I already know going into this sort of environment that some people never really get better. Comfort is key...full recovery is not. If a person is able to overcome their circumstances and graduate out of our facility, what a blessing!!
Coming from a little office of only 5 people, into a group of double digit nurses, plus office and other staff members is a big change. There are some interesting dianamics that I haven't really encountered before. I have sensed that there is a lot of tension between nurses. The Chaplain explained that this phenomenon is due to the high stress and the negativity related to all of the really sick patients. These patients are really needy and often have demanding family members. Those sorts of things tend to wear on the nurses and causes them to take it out on eachother. I personally believe that a lot of nurses have issues with control. They want to be in control of their patients, themselves and their environment. Of course this isn't a realistic expectation. At times, when the world isn't cooperating, the nurses get upset and lash out. Power struggles play out too. Instead of each person looking at their coworkers as a huge source of knowlege and assistance, some nurses feel inferior or even superior and then the horn clashing begins.
I've noticed a good bit of eye rolling, hen like cackling and ruffled feathers. It's a shame too. I see why it happens though. My goal is to avoid this drama and head butting as much as possible. I know that so much of what goes on in places like that have nothing REALLY to do with me personally. I will try to just do my job to the best of my ability, care for my patients in a manner that I have been called by God to do and then head home knowing that I made a difference. That's my goal. My prayer is that God will help guide me through all of this and help me to avoid major obstacles and that he will take my own burdens up on HIS shoulders.
 In this life I have been given, I learned a few years ago that I have control of NOTHING. I learned from my previous marriage that I can not change anyone. I have learned to take each day as it comes. And I have learned from being a nurse that each patient, no matter what level of consciousness they may appear to be at, is still a human being with needs. The one thing that I learned from a dear friend/cancer patient named Terry, is that it is so important for each patient to feel like a human being and not like a disease (or a number).
So for my first days at the hospital, I feel like I am starting all over. I am so thankful that I haven't lost every bit of knowlege that I have about nursing. I have been thrilled over the moments of knowlege that come to me. I thought my bulb had burned out completely...I guess not! That little bulb turns on and shines from time to time!!! I'm rusty in my practice but still salvageable!
I find it so interesting that God has brought me to this place at this time in my life. My hope is that he will use me to help further HIS Kingdom. I am really looking forward to being witness to these situations I am talking about. I know that I have been so blessed in every area of nursing that I have worked in. Naturally there have been ups and downs in all of the places I've worked. That's life. The bad helps us to appreciate the good. It's my hope though that the good out weighs the bad! But the absolute miracles and examples of God's grace and mercy have been so amazing!!
So now if you see me on a Tuesday night, Wednesday night or Thursday night, know this: I probably have just worked a 12 hour shift with some really, really sick people; I worked Wed. at the Vein practice and Im still tired from my previous 12 hr shift and then will be at church that evening; Thursday will be another 12 hour shift taking care of really, really sick people. Please be understanding of my yawns and stretching...it's not a show of disrespect!
Thank you God for getting me to this point, even if it took months for you to go from saying "be still and wait", to "YES!"