I've worked in E.R for years and one thing I notice about a lot of Nurses, you are considered a good nurse if you're highly skilled w/ procedures...I don't see compassion and kindness as part of being a good nurse anymore. That is not the essence of Nursing...well it used to be a vocation.

Last night I saw my co-worker forcing the NGT through a 70YO patient screaming "please stop...it hurts"..she won't stop until i told her so. I waited for several minutes talk to the patient about the procedure got another nurse to hold his hand for support not for restraint and gently insert the tube while giving him assurance. I treated him like im inserting an NGT to my Grandpa.

I quite agree Amandatic1 it is extremely important that compassion is demonstrated by nurses. I would have thought that treating people as you would wish to be treated yourself is a fundamental requirement of nursing. Nurses who act in this way should have no place in nursing.

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Julie
http://www.lifeinthenhs.wordpress.com

Friend,

Thank you for intervening on behalf of the old gentleman. You were absolutely correct to do so. You are also to be commended for ensuring that he ultimately received optimal care.

I'm sorry that you do not see "compassion and kindness as part of being a good nurse anymore." Let me assure you that while the vocation of nursing may a gift given to only a few, the responsibility to provide both the art and the science of nursing still exists among all nurses.

What do you think could be done to increase the provision of wholistic care? Are there barriers that need to be removed? How might these changes be implemented?

Looking forward to your answers as well as to the comments and answers of others,

Joy

The best nurses are the well rounded ones. The ones that have knowledge, skills, and most of all compassion. In fact, I think my own hospital experiences have made me a better nurse, and I didn't do anything "technical" while being sick. I just got to view the "other side" from the first hand.

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www.MyOwnWoman.blogspot.com

Hospitals get a bad name because of people like that. At the moment I am doing quite a bit of agency nursing in Nursing homes. And I have seen some terrible stuff, and heard of more. Many of these facilities are high care, so incontinence pads are on all patients and they get changed on a regular basis. However at one facility I witnessed an old lady's legs being forced apart to insert the pad. I was so horrified that I no longer take jobs at this facility, and according to my agency they how have trouble finding people to work there due to how the full time staff treat the residents.

All my grandparents have spent time in nursing homes (all now deceased) so I don't like thinking of these people as my grandparents, but I see them as living people, who need our care.

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'Think not of yourself as the architect of your career but as the sculptor. Expect to have to do a lot of hard hammering and chiselingand scraping and polishing. - BC Forbes'

Absolutely! I became a master at NG insertion after having an ER nurse cause massive bilateral epistaxis trying to put one in ME! I became a much better nurse, a more empathetic nurse, after I had been a patient once or twice.

When we do procedures we are not doing it "to" the patient, but we are guiding them "through" it. Big difference in how you approach any tube if you think of it that way!

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The ER is the only place where you are rewarded for efficiency by getting more patients!

Kim
http://www.emergiblog.com