I am an artist.

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I never considered myself an artsy person. My sister can paint the most amazing landscapes, I was green with envy. I can barely color inside the lines. I looked up to her wanted to paint and draw and sculpt the way she did. After failing art class, I gave up on that dream, and found out I was a scientist. She went on to study art, and me nursing. We often joke about how opposite we are. Little did I know that I too was an artist.

In nursing school I excelled in the sciences. I have a continued passion for learning the whys and how's about my patients. I find the human body fascinating. It's amazing how far our bodies are pushed.

I thought nursing would be a great fit for me. I could exercise my knowledge hungry mind, while using my compassionate heart. I thought maybe the OR, or labor and delivery, something fast and bloody. However I lost my placement last minuet in school, and was forced onto a palliative unit. What an awful place to be. What really could I learn? Why would anyone want to be somewhere so sad? Sigh.....It has been a couple of years since my love of palliative nursing began. I am still on the same unit, and still learning.

Many times our teachers told us that nursing is an art. It never really clicked until just this week. A friend of mine who works in ER was reflecting on a pt she had who passed away. She said to me what an art form it is to be a good palliative nurse. From knowing just the right way to touch, the carefully chosen words, where to leave a box a tissue. Palliative nursing, all nursing, is an art. It takes a skilled craftsmen to just feel your patient will not make it, to call the family so they may arrive just in time. Science doesn't tell me how long I can hug my patients, it's can't help me tell the little girl her daddy is in heaven now and it will never tell me its okay to cry. A scientist runs the same a 100 times, with the same results each time, but an artist never paints the same thing twice.

An artist, a tittle I gave up all hope on after failing grade 8 art, is what I have become.

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I always believed that nursing is a performing art too.

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That was beautifully written, thank you!

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As someone who has always regretted that I never pursued a career in Art (natural gift that I have been told I wasted), I want to thank you for that.

There is also a degree of creativity involved in nursing (especially working with dementia patients) and I utilize that creativity everyday.

Thanks for reminding me.

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Thanks for sharing this.

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Specializes in Critical Care, Education.

Wonderful!! Thank you Daisy.

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You are so right! Sometimes when I see a patient crying, I freeze up at first because I was never taught how to react to that. But because nursing is an art, you have to be creative in how you treat every situation. It is what makes us so much different from the other sciences!

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Specializes in Cardiac.

Daisy, you sound like a beautifully creative person. Please don't ever feel down on yourself, art is in the eye of the beholder.

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