Nursing Leadership, Health Care Reform, Chocolate, Sleeping In, Blogs… and other random thoughts

My blog… how I have missed you… today as I write I feel guilty about all of the things I am NOT doing. I am NOT currently rewriting my Health Assessment course material that got lost in our downgrade (a downgrade after an upgrade) in ANGEL (for those of you who don’t know that is a university computerized learning platform). I am NOT currently writing on my comprehensive exam final… just thinking about that thing makes me want to vomit. I am NOT at the grocery store, cleaning my house, or helping with the finishing touches on our bathroom remodel that took place 6 weeks ago (yes… there is still more to do). I WANT (and am) to be back in bed, eating Askinosie Chocolate (http://www.askinosie.com), with the covers pulled over my head… trying to make all of the things I am NOT doing go away. Hiding doesn’t make things go away very well, but stepping back, resting and reevaluating does help… We have to reevaluate and rest in our own way; mine involves my bed, my pajamas and chocolate.

I AM thinking about Nursing. Nursing is my favorite profession and the light of health care in the U.S. and around the world. As I hide this morning… I wonder sometimes why, as a nurse, I am doing all these things that make me want to hide? I am writing blog posts, twittering, working on revamping my courses to make them better (something I have no time to do with my gazillion advisees and trying to finish school), leading a local nursing organization, pursuing a PhD of nursing…. Why? … I could just clock in and out of some clinic somewhere and see 40 patients a day and make twice the money I am making and come home and rest… Why don’t I do that???… (I am not telling you this to boast or brag. Please hear me honestly.)… I am seriously wondering why I don’t do that?

Then, I read two great blog post by my friend Lee Weeks on her Facebook page (yes, she is bloging there because she currently has blog difficulty)… the posts were about nursing and health care reform. I wish you could have read them. She writes so well… moves the audience… brings people to the point without showing them she is taking them there…. Anyway…

One of her posts asked for comments from nurses to give their stories of health care and why or why not they feel reform is needed. Many of her posts get comments, but this one laid silent. I wondered why? Then the thought hit me… maybe nurses (on the whole) don’t see problems with health care because we are too busy caring for all patients at the bedside and we could give a flip less about someone’s insurance status! Nurses just do it. Nurses don’t see the patient through bills, rejection for medical tests or referrals, etc. Nurses don’t see patients this way because we generally don’t bill or refer… we simply care for the patient…any patient… regardless. How nurse-like of us. If only the entire medical system worked this way… just cared for patients?

That led me back to think about why I am doing all of these insane things with my nursing career…. is it for me? For fame? For some administration position or lead research role somewhere? … I have to say no. I don’t want to be director of a program, or an administrator with lots of meetings,… I want to keep on nursing… and teaching other nurses how precious and valuable they are… to do this well requires something from me I guess… persistence. (Why did I go here? Uhg… my jammies are getting sweaty and I start to squirm… I thought this post was going to talk me out of these insane things….)

More Thinking… about nurses….When I look at the world of nursing from under my covers I see that NURSES can change health care precisely because of who we are. Thinking of this in my P.J.’s, with the covers pulled up to my chin… I yell SWEET! (and I am not talking about my Akinosie chocolate)…. Nurses provide the kind of health care our world needs every minute of every day (when they are not busy charting what administrators want in  17 different places)…Whenever a nurse encourages a laboring patient, takes the time to teach a heart attack survivor about their new medications, teaches a class of baby sitters CPR, administers a pain medication, hugs a dying patient’s spouse, … they are changing the world. Servant leadership is nursing…. and I, little old no one from the Midwest, with an average IQ and a big mouth…., I get to be a part of this… I get to call myself NURSE! What an honor!

Yet, the nurses and the nurse leaders I listen for are silent about how wonderful Nursing is. Why? I don’t think they realize how big of an impact they make every day and I think they are too busy to involve/invite the outside world and media into their profession. Nurses are all down right busy! This busyness is keeping our good secret a secret. Right now, that is not good.

Maybe it is time for nurses and the profession of nursing to step back from the chaos of overtime, understaffed, big-business model hospitals, argumentative health care debates and just hide under our covers, in our pajamas with some chocolate and think….

From my spot in my bed I see that health care reform is nothing to be feared, it is a golden opportunity for all of us… particularly nursing. From my comfortable nest among my covers I see that NURSING is how  health care reform should be viewed…. a paradigm for how to do it… with hard work, determination and our patients in mind (all of our patients… no matter their ability to pay or not)…. Nurses have seen the best and the worst of what access to care can cause in/do to patients, yet we still care for the patients no mater what brought them to us; changing one life at a time and doing it for everyone that is assigned to us.  So, nurses are silent in the health care reform debate because we are busy taking care of what we have to take care of… patients and bringing up new nurses to help us in our work…. also because mostly we are the quiet unassuming ones in the back ground who don’t get asked to the big dance because we are too busy working.

My advice to leaders everywhere… First of all, get your own nurse and make friends with them... you will want one when you go to the hospital… THEN, step back from health reform and take a day off, under your covers, with chocolate (or whatever) and with the people you love around you, and rest. Then….(People out there in health care reform meetings)…. get some nurses off of work for a day and invite them to your meeting and ask them about the work they do every day…. or better yet, follow them around for a day (wow what an eye opener that would be)…

My advice to nurses… take the day off, in your jammies, under the covers and then think about who you can show/share your career with that is not a nurse. Then, just like your work…. do it.

My advice to myself.… keep plugging along…. these things I do… are because I love nursing, because I have the honor of being a nurse. Through all of the patients I have watched be born, die, be healed, learn about themselves and their uniqueness…. through all of the nurses I have been HONORED to teach and now call peers….. I promise to keep doing my job as a nurse, a nurse educator, a nurse practitioner, to ensure that nurses know how precious they are and so patients continue to have access to good care. To the people I know who are nurses… THANK YOU! You inspire me and you are the reason I am going to get out of my bed and start working on rewriting my health assessment class and my comprehensive exams…. I think I am going to keep on the pajamas though!