As we honor nurses this year, I can’t help but remember the great certified nurse’s assistants I have been honored to serve alongside.

My patient the other night was a World War II fighter pilot. My co-worker, Bea, a certified nurse’s assistant, had cared for him on previous nights, but I was meeting him and his lovely family for the first time. As Bea observed he was significantly less responsive, a son left to share Bea’s observations and update the family.

I was struck by how much I share in common with this elderly couple. They were married on October 5; (more…)

I was thrilled to be pregnant with my third child. He was as answer to prayer. I was in my 30’s and had two sons, ages six and eight at home. Friends would exclaim, “Aren’t you excited?!” and ask if I had decorated the nursery yet. Truthfully, I was so busy taking care of my two children, I really hadn’t given it much thought. I began to feel so ashamed as I failed to display the excitement and enthusiasm expected of me as an expectant mother. Was I a terrible mother to my unborn son?

Then, one day at a routine OB/GYN appointment, my physician instructed me to return once a week as he was unable to find the baby’s heartbeat. I called my mother from my car, suddenly sobbing. I was so afraid I had bonded with my baby and now I was so very worried. My mother said, “Oh honey, of course you have bonded with your baby.”

Years later as that same son began school, friends would ask if it saddened me to see my baby starting school. I truly was not sad. I imagined the hours of peace, quiet, and freedom I would have as I drove to him to school the first day. (more…)

Nursing has come far in the years since Florence Nightingale’s struggle to establish nursing schools in England. Ms. Nightingale was discouraged from entering nursing which was not an honorable profession.

Fast forward 140 years or so. Nurses have been the number one most trusted profession every year since 1999 except 2001 when firefighters claimed the honor.

Nursing education is offered at our finest institutions and online.
We live in amazing times. I recently wrote about how technology changed seemingly overnight during my career and how modern social networking brought me to the Nurses Network. We strive to help nurses master professional subject matter and improve patient outcomes.

Community

Inside the Nurses Network, you have instant interaction with nurses from around the world. I am fortunate to have nurse friends from many countries. (more…)

I am so grateful to be a nurse. I often hear people say it is a recession proof career. After all, everyone gets sick or injured sometime in their lifetime and there is a global nursing shortage.

The other day it dawned on me, nurses haven’t escaped unscathed, (more…)

My mother was a teacher and my son is a senior in a Bachelor of Education program, so I often reflect the many similar issues in education and nursing. One area which has seen great evolution in both careers is technology.

Overhead projectors and whiteboards replaced blackboards, depriving students of the honor of “clapping the erasers.” Asthma which is so prevalent in the modern school did not seem to exist in the white chalk cloud.

For entertainment, we listened to the AM radio. We prayed the DJ wouldn’t talk as we placed the microphone next to the speaker to record a song. We purchased 8 tracks, LPs, and later, cassettes. Children played with view masters and etch a sketch. My family was so advanced, my father surprised us with a Pong unit attached to our family’s only console black and white TV. Aluminum coated rabbit ears made the reception of the 3 television stations much clearer which was a treat when we watched cartoons on Saturday.

We ran to answer the one rotary wall phone which we shared with our neighbor on a party line.

As a nursing student in the 80’s the most technologically advanced equipment we used was a calculator. We still used a resusi-Annie, prudently cleansed with alcohol between students.

Upon graduation, we all went en masse to Macon, Georgia to be locked in the Macon Coliseum and take the 2 day NCLEX exam. Two number 2 pencils were required. We received a temporary license and worked as a graduate nurse pending NCLEX results.

Computers were being introduced on the nursing unit at the progressive teaching hospital where I worked after graduation. We were all so afraid to touch the computer, sure that we would press the wrong button and wipe it all out. Today’s graduates take the NCLEX exam individually on line. In 2006 I completed my BSN on line.

I was fortunate a high school teacher suggested I take typing if I planned on attending college. Later I was so impressed when typewriters with correction ribbon were introduced. I remember how impressed a fellow nurse was when I called the unit from my car phone which was plugged into my cigarette lighter. It was quite the status symbol to be issued a beeper when I served as house supervisor.

Recently, the Georgia Congress on Nursing Practice identified License/Privacy as an issue EVERY nurse should care about. A visit to the Georgia Secretary of State’s website to verify professional licensure reveals the professional’s personal information. When I was telling my son how outraged I am that my information is so freely shared, he asked me if it was that way when I graduated in 1985. I had to remind him we did not have the internet in 1985.

Today from any computer or hot spot nurses can enroll in internet courses or use the patient simulator. I can easily access information from the Mayo clinic as I work nights at my small rural north Georgia hospital.

Despite all these advances, the human contribution remains the essential ingredient.