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Appreciating Nurses
By
Tom Quirk |
 Scituate
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Blessed with
health, we tend to place credence in the doctor’s opinions
and only encounter nurses at an annual physical.
Professionally we take pride in our business importance;
fact is that we are at the bottom of the Gallop Survey on
honesty and ethical standards and nurses are at the top!
The 2.4 million registered nurses make up 15% of the
estimated 15 million healthcare workers in the United States
and are the largest segment of the healthcare workforce. By
2020 there will be a shortage of 800,000 nurses; an
extremely worrisome estimate!
Nurse derives from the Latin nutricius, (person who
nourishes). Nurses are knowledgeable, caring,
sympathetic, detail oriented and responsible as they
continuously work to improve their patient’s situation. They
develop and implement a plan of care, in collaboration with
the physician, other healthcare professionals, the patient
and the family.
Their emotional stability enables them to cope with human
suffering and other stresses in their daily and close
personal contact with critically ill patients and their
families. This is especially true in the case of critical
care, trauma and neuroscience nurses. Nurses are the
patient’s best advocate.
At MGH, Jean Watson, PhD, and RN defined caring as “a
quality that is based on human values and a concern for the
well-being of others” and a caring occasion as “the moment
when a nurse and another person come together in such a way
that an occasion for human caring is created. Both, when
aware that a caring occasion exists, are influenced by the
choices and actions within the relationship, and it becomes
transpersonal and the event of the moment expands the limits
of openness and has the ability to expand human
capabilities.” I have experienced this.
On May 6, 1982, President Ronald Reagan proclaimed National
Recognition Day for Nurses. Eventually President Reagan and
many of us have been, or will be, well served by special
nursing care. Florence Nightingale, when only twenty- four,
wrote in her journal, “God spoke to me and called me to his
service.” Many of us have special nurses in our lives and
thankful are we that these thoughts of a very young Florence
Nightingale are shared by these dedicated nurses of today.
Take a moment to reflect on that this Sunday, May 6, 2007
and as you interact with nurses in the future.
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About The
Author
For more information you may contact Tom Quirk at (781)
545-2300, extension 628 or via email at tfquirk@aol.com. For
more detailed information about brain aneurysms, please
visit the Brain Aneurysm Foundation’s web site at
www.bafound.org.
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