Life skills nurses learn

I totally agree even though it made me

Speaking strictly about my residents-I have learned that everyone can teach you something. Patience, compassion, humility and the ability to laugh at yourself every once in a while.

May I print/use this in my ED? We have recently gone through some growing pains and I believe this could be a lift in morale which we desperately need.

On another note, as soon as I saw this it made me think of emergency nursing which has been referred to as "controlled chaos" for as long as I can remember. It's amazing how we can manage mass casualty/disasters, critical patients, and a multitude of other things simultaneously, but give any of us a mundane task to complete and we freak out... LOL I needed this.

Life Lesson #1:

Life is ABOUT Plan B! (Or as I've heard it stated: Man plans; God laughs!)

My first day of nursing school, was total chaos our instructor could not make it in, and we had to learn the first word in nursing, which our DON told us was FLEXIBILITY!! She said never forget it, and I haven't. It is always there with me!

Chaos? WHAT chaos??

Chaos in nursing? Nah. LOL In six short months, I have learned to ignore almost anything that can be safely ignored. The single most important lesson that I've learned is that I'm one person. I can only do so much at any given time. As long as everybody's breathing and has a relatively safe rhythm on the tele monitor, it's all good. I learned to stop focusing on the infinite number of minute details that threaten to derail my day. As long as everybody's still breathing when I leave my shift and the boss isn't up my rear end, I call it a good day.

Now, I'm still a new grad/new nurse. Some days overwhelm the h*** out of me. (Today was one of those days. lol) I think the most important lesson that I've learned is to laugh about it after it's over. Yep, today kicked a$$, but we won out in the end. The day is over, we're all home in our nice, comfy jammies, and most of us are probably already well on our ways to being 3 sheets to the wind (or already passed out in bed lol). It was a tough day, but in the end, WE WON! Sometimes survival through sheer stubbornness is all we can do. Thank goodness sheer stubbornness was one of the traits that I brought with me when I started this crazy career! It does come in handy sometimes.