I'm currently biding my time while waiting for a seat in the nursing program at my local college working as a phlebotomist/lab assistant in a large hospital. I figured it would help me acclimate to the hospital environment and give me a general "lay of the land," and so far it has done exactly that. It has also underscored that nursing is the correct 2nd career choice for me.
But, an unexpected byproduct has been that it has strengthened my spiritual awareness. I've never been a terribly religious person. One parent was Episcopalian and the other was Jewish, and I learned a lot about both the Christian and Jewish doctrines and philosophies. I more or less decided I have no use for organized religion, but have always been what I term as "spiritual". I beleive in a "supreme being" but have always honored and respected this being in my own way, and not through the hymns, creeds and dogmas of organized religions.
I find that my spirituality has risen more to the surface since I have started working in the hospital environment. Some examples:
* When I see the transplant team bringing in a cooler off the helicopter, I am struck by the fact that someone has died and someone else is getting a reprieve from a death sentence. I think about the person who died, what their family must be going through, and I also think about the person getting the transplant - that they have just gotten "the call" and what that means to them.
* When I draw blood one someone who is terminally ill or is about to go through a major operation, I hope that their transition or recovery is peaceful and easy.
* When I have to deal with patients in the psych unit I am struck by how indiscriminate and insidious mental disease is in striking its victims.
In the many instances I have encountered like this, I find myself connecting with them spiritually and for lack of a better way to describe it, saying a little prayer for them despite the fact that I don't subscribe to prayer in the traditional sense.
I'm not surprised at this heightened sense of spirituality, but rather that it hasn't diminished. I figured that over time I would become "desensitized" to the life dramas that are played out in the hospital setting, day in and day out.
Has anyone else experienced a similar phenomenon with their own sense of spirituality?
