New Year's Resolutions For Nurses

**VivaLasViejas**, ASN, RN

Never tell anyone outside my circle of influence that I'm a nurse.

For anyone who's been a nurse as long as I have, this should be a no-brainer, but this is ME we're talking about here. I'm a sucker for a hard-luck story ("My grandmother hasn't had a BM in nine days!!") and I have this weird need to play CSI and investigate the source of a problem.

Naturally, this leads to some interesting encounters with folks I'd usually interact with on only a casual basis. Once I made the mistake of agreeing to check out a persistent sore on my neighbor's leg (with the disclaimer that I can't give medical advice, of course) and almost blew chow-chow all over his living room when I found maggots in it.

Work smarter, not harder.

I'm a champion at creating user-friendly forms for my workplace. Unfortunately, I've also got a lazy streak that's a mile long, and I'm always thinking of ways I can do things better and faster. So I spend time that would probably be better used actually completing the paperwork I already invented on developing new-and-improved versions of it. Needless to say, this is a waste of precious time and I would get SO much more done if I'd just knock it off.

Keep building up that invisible wall that prevents nursing's slings and arrows from penetrating my "space".

It's taken me fifty-three years of living and fifteen years of nursing to grasp the concept that patients and families do not have the right to determine how I feel about myself on any given day. Some time ago I began visualizing the construction of an invisible brick wall that allows me to see out (and thus where I may have gone wrong), but protects me from internalizing the crap that gets slung at me by cantankerous residents and the hypercritical family members who live to snipe at facility staff, just because they can. This invisible barrier helps me to remember that just because somebody SAYS a thing is so, doesn't make it so.

Lead by example.

It's put-up-or-shut-up time: I have to start modeling the behaviors I want to see in others. Namely, I need to get back to watching my diet and find a way to whip myself into some kind of shape. I've got diabetic residents with out-of-control blood sugars, not to mention an obese husband and sister who need some kind of inspiration to get moving; but as hard as it's going to be, it's up to me to provide some leadership or we're ALL going to hell in a handbasket full of junk food.

Be the kind of nurse I would want caring for me.....or my loved ones.

No one expects nurses to be angels in white these days, thank God. But the public, which consistently rates us at or near the top of most trusted professionals year after year, deserves health care providers who know how to encourage healthy lifestyles without judgmentalism, how to educate without condescension, how to offer hope without sugarcoating. We need to be skilled, yes, but we also need to have "emotional IQ"---that sixth sense that eludes so many and cannot be taught, yet is so vital to human relationships that its absence can literally ignite a war.....or alienate a patient at one of the most vulnerable times of his or her life.

This list is by no means exhaustive, of course, as I am a flawed human being who needs a lot of work. But I've learned not to make a long list, only to be overwhelmed by trying to do too much at one time and giving up on all of them. There's plenty here for me to do over the next twelve months. How about you?