Happy Nurse’s Week!

It is that time of year again.

Where everyone we’ve given free medical advice to in the past year thanks us.

Nah, I’m only kidding.

But it is Nurse’s week.

Congratulations to us for choosing the hardest schooling and working under the most extreme conditions. Especially in 2020. And 2021. And 2022.

All those years and months in an N-95 mask did was hone our skills and sharpen our dedication to the profession.

It’s not for nothing that I liken nursing to blue-collar work. Because it is hard.

I have been punched and hit and cussed out and peed on and pooped on and pinched. Once a former nursery school teacher, who had dementia, cornered me in the bathroom in the nursing home for 20 minutes. I couldn’t leave her, she could have fallen. All I could do was pull the emergency bathroom alarm and wait. And wait. And wait. Finally, someone came to help me help her back to bed.

Nursing. It’s not for sissies.

It is with some fondness that I remember working nights in the nursing home as a certified nursing assistant. It taught me a lot of things. Time management, how to budget because every other week my paycheck was a day short, how to talk to difficult patients, how to turn and change 32 patients every two hours every night. But the second best thing it ever taught me was how to lift. I lifted a 500-pound patient out of bed every morning, with her help. Well, I levered a 500-pound patient out of bed every morning so she could go visit her mom in another wing.

The best thing that it gave me was the desire to return to a nursing program and finish my RN. And so I did. Look at me now, a PhD student. Okay, it’s nearly 30 years later but it still counts.

Happy Nurse’s Week.

As I tell my fellow hospital nurses, find yourself a corporation to work for that wants to help you be the best nurse you want to be. If that is no longer the hospital, that is okay. If it is higher in the corporation, that is also okay. Weird flex but okay.

Happy Nurse’s Week.

Be the nurse you want to be.