We all have our good and bad days in the nursing profession. Sometimes on those bad days I drive home and think about the reasons why I am here (in this profession).
When I first decided to enter the nursing profession I began to think of what the role of a nurse looked like. Visions of holding patients hands during painful procedures, collaborating with other healthcare providers to ensure quality patient care, the heroic vision of a nurse rushing to the aid of a patient during a life-threatening experiences...etc. No matter what I envisioned as the role of a nurse, this vision always involved a dedicated, caring, compassionate, nurturing nurse who was there to help her patient during their time of need and suffering. My decision to enter this profession was one based on helping others and making a difference. And to this day this remains my reason for remaining in this field.
Now, as a nurse educator I see new nurses enter nursing with somewhat differing attitudes towards what nursing is and what it should be. While I do not want to belittle or undermine every new nurse, because I do know there are many great new nurses out there, I do not see the passion for this profession for this field nor do I see the commitment to patient care.
I reflect on this now becuase of what I have been working on recently: patient falls and skin breakdown. We have a recent incline in these occurences and as an educator I have been working to determine cause and develop educational initiatives to decrease these incidents. I started assess patient falls and the events that led to these falls. I would ask myself: are nurses assessing their patients appropriately for fall risk? For those patients who are at risk, are the necessary intervention being initiated? Is there a need to educate on proper identification of at risk patients and proper interventions? I would read articles to help me along in this process. Reccomendations found in nursing literature discussed risk screens, bed alarms, patient education, visual cues to raise awareness for patients to remember to ask for assistance...etc. I had found for the most part these interventions had already been put into place. I was stumped.
Then one afternoon as I walked through the nurses station, I heard a bed alarm sound. I quickly turned to find where the alarm come from and walk down the hall and noted not one person followed or joined to assist me. Why was no one else concerned about the possibility of a patient at risk?
I asked a nurse at the station why she did not assist me in finding out if the patient was ok her response was: "That was not my patient", followed by "with our short staffing, sometimes you just cannot prevent these falls".
Not only was I shocked, disappointed, angry about the nurse's response I could not help but think how many other nurses had this feeling of indifference towards their patients and their roles as a nurse. Are we all here in this profession for the right reasons? Is this job just about collecting a paycheck? How do we engage nurses in this profession and bring back the passion for what we do on a daily basis?
