Be the Nurse You Would Want As a Patient

Have you ever been a patient in the hospital? If not, count yourself very lucky. If you haven't had the experience, you can use your imagination. What made the experience a memorable one.......good or bad?? Let's be the nurse that we would want as a patient. Nurses Rock Nurse Life

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If you have had the misfortune of being a patient in the hospital, what stands out about your experience? No matter the specific reason for your admission, I'm sure it was an experience you would rather not have had. What was it that made your experience a good one.......or a not so good one?? Was it the care you received......... or the care you did not receive??

Nurses do not have the ability to change your reason for being in the hospital, but they do have the capacity to make your hospital experience a more pleasant one. I am not talking about customer care, so to speak. I am talking about nursing.........including the little things. What might seem little to us may mean the world to the patient. Think about lying in bed in pain....not being able to get out of bed by yourself....dependent upon strangers for even the small things.....like a drink of cold water......assistance to the bathroom......kind words of explanation regarding tests and procedures......common courtesies. Nurses can change patient experiences-making difficult things less difficult, being present when there are painful and uncomfortable situations, being there to help navigate through the confusing medical world.

We all know all the administrative tasks vying for our time as nurses, with technical and managerial aspects of care sometimes taking priority over delivery of care. We also know that increased patient loads decreases the amount of time we can spend with each patient. Sometimes we get so caught up in all the "things" we have to do that we forget what one of our main jobs is.....to compassionately and empathetically care for the patient. But the patient is more than a name, a room number, a diagnosis..... The patient is a real person with feelings, concerns, and needs. We only get to see them while they are hurting. But we must remember, that this patient has a life outside of the hospital......or at least they did before they got to the hospital. For all we know, this may be their last stop before they die. Ours may be the last face that they see......our words the last that they hear.

If you were the patient in room 37-H who had just been told that they only had a few weeks to live, how would you feel? What would you want from your nurse? How could she/he help ease the blow you had just been dealt? It is true she/he cannot change your diagnosis.....cannot take away the disease that is slowly taking your life. But she can help to ease some of your physical and mental discomforts.......by just being there......for you and you family. Being there to listen and answer questions. Being there to see if you would like for her/him to call your pastor or the hospital chaplain. Being there to hold your hand when others have gone home for the night.

Sometimes we forget that bedside nursing involves being at the bedside for more than procedures, medications, assessments. Yes, all of these things are definitely important to the care of our patient. But we must also remember that it is at the bedside where we can let the true compassion of our profession shine through some of the darkest hours that our patients and their families face. Remember.........one day we will all experience those dark hours. Maybe it will only be a few days before the sun shines again for us and we are discharged home. Or maybe it will be for the final time that we will see the light shine on this side of death. When our time comes, let's hope that we are lucky enough to get the type of nurse we were to our patients.

As we go through each day, let's try to imagine what we would think if we were in the patient's place. Let's be the nurse that we would want as a patient.


To read more articles, such as Munchausen by Internet: The Lying Disease that Preys on the Heart, and When Nurses Cry, go to my allnurses blog: Body, Mind, and Soul

great post. empathy is a key..

I am one of those who is becoming a nurse because of the nurses (the good ones) who impacted me (and continue to) as I've dealt with both chronic and acute illnesses for the majority of my life....it's sometimes an odd "balance"--I'm the student nurse in clinical all day and then the patient all night/weekend (literally....sometimes when the ER is busy I do both, and manage my own IV's!), but I have to believe that knowing how it feels to be in that bed helps me care a little more, be a little kinder, and hopefully be one of the "good ones".....(and for better or worse, dealing with GI failure and associated chronic issues, I'm never too far away from getting more "experience" on the other side to brush up on my empathy skills :p )

Ive had a few bad weeks in work and the only thing that has made me remeber that I love being a nurse is my patients. Now management and poltics I could do without.

Specializes in Pediatrics and developmental disabilities.

I was recently in the hospital and I wanted a rootbeer to drink but none on floor and cafeteria had none. I had brought money but I couldn't leave the floor. It was evening and all my family had gone home after I asked for the rootbeer and the nurse told me they didn't have any I was like that is ok. Well I had initially told her I had money so when she came back in and told me there wasn't any she said you have money i will go down and get one for you out of the vending machine. I replied I know your busy with other patients don't worry about it she responded you are my patient and I make time for all my patients she took the money went and got it and came back. I was in tears when she came back in and she asked what was wrong I told her nothing but that what she had said and done meant so much to me she replied no problem. After she left I used my cellphone and called the operator and asked to speak with nursing supervisor of that floor and told her what this nurse had done for me and her name wanted to let them know. Hopefully they did something or said something to her about how great she was, bit I don't know I left before she came back for a shift. Talk about great bedside manner and making a patient feel special.

Specializes in Registered Nurse.
Also, it's worth noting that the kind of nurse I'd want as a pt and the kind you'd want might be two very different kinds of nurses. The last thing I'd want is a stranger trying to "connect" with me. Even if I just got bad news, I'd want a brisk, but polite, nurse who did an assessment, gave me my meds and got out of the room. When nurses like me act aloof like this, we *are* being the nurse we'd want as a patient.

Old thread but not closed....sooooo.....just wanted to say, I knew a nurse that I thought I would NOT want as my nurse early on, back in the beginning of my nursing career, when I was an LPN. She was always joking and talking with her patients, making them "feel better"!...but she never cared as much for the hygienic care or "fluffing". I was the "fluff nurse"...I liked my patients very clean and, I thought, comfortable. I understand her much better today. We were dealing with many people who were dying, and she was trying to make them smile. She gave them pain medication to feel better too. But she was not a fluff nurse, and her patients were fine with that. Now, I understand more why.

I spent a week in the hospital in May for meningitis following a suboccipital craniectomy with duraplasty and c1 laminectomy. It was both a good and a bad experience, but overall good. My nurses paid attention when I told them the steroid they were pushing in my iv was VERY painful and they pushed it slowly after that, which helped immensely. They also stopped my vancomycin infusion immediately when they noticed I was showing signs of Redman syndrome... and they continued to run it slowly every time after. They were immediately responsive to my pain needs. All of my aides, except one, were attentive and helpful. The one who wasn't claimed that she didn't have enough time to help me walk in the hallway every time I asked and she got huffy when I asked her to close my blinds. Not ONE of the other aides had any issue with helping me ambulatory. I tried hard not to be "that" patient, but just in case, I made sure my husband brought each shift a big tray of cookies. Even my doctors were great, except one who d/c'd a pain medication after he told me he was going to decrease my steroid and I could expect my pain level to increase... 😐. I was not a happy camper... he was covering for my doc...and I made sure to complain as soon as my doc came back. Not because he stopped the med, but because he didn't even bother to tell me. I found out when it was time for my meds and I asked the nurse where my medication was. The whole experience made me much more aware of the entire system as a whole and how each of us affects the patient.