– By Laura Ann White, Senior –
Laura is currently participating in a Mayo Clinic Summer III externship where she is learning that a nurse’s caring and empathetic attitude is essential on the job.
Over the past three years in volunteer and clinical situations, I have encountered nurses of many types.
One thing that drove my desire to become a nurse was seeing the contrast of the job-driven nurse against the people-driven nurse. The former is typically unhappy most of the day, the patient in four has paged their call light again, the patient in six is so rude, the patient in fifteen smells awful, I had to clean up fourteen again. What a shame! All the while, the latter nurse goes about her day, not without its challenges, not without its wretched smells and difficult patients, but with a love that sparks something deeper within, something that feels a lot like compassion. How fulfilling it is to be the latter nurse for a day. The patient in four lost her mom at age sixteen, the patient in six is in a lot of pain today because of her chemo, the patient in fifteen is scared and confused, fourteen loves her cat.
One of my favorite things to do is to peek through the charts of my patients, to learn about their journey here. For most patients on the oncology unit, it has been a long and trying one. A wonderful professor of mine at UT always tells us to stay close to the story of our patient, because this will make what you do easier and more worthwhile.
The nurses on my unit are not bitter. They are not resentful. They do not talk down about their patients. Yes, there are difficult days, difficult weeks. Things do not go as planned, family members get angry, treatments fail, timing fails, and patients pass away. Yet, the conversation presented by these nurses on Friday surrounded the pod with a special reverence. Each of the nurses on my unit have lost a patient at some point, we lost a young mother of four on Friday, a twenty-something with brain cancer lost his frontal lobe and most of his personality earlier in the week. These nurses know the privilege this life is, the gift we have in every passing day.
An older nurse on our unit comments on the tendency our society has to push jobs focused on gaining revenue, a certain superior level of education, and the like. Why would I waste my life doing something I hate for more money? Life is too short and can surprise us with less time than we thought we had, she says.