Help with Caring Behaviors.

[Nurse2B2005]

Hi everyone!

I am a first semester nursing student. Yay! I love the nursing program that I am in, but at the same time, it's alot of hard work.

I have to write a 2 page paper about an example of caring that I have shown to my med-surg client. They only problem is that I can't think of one. Don't get me wrong, it's not that I am NOT showing caring behaviors - it's just that most of the behaviors that I show, seem like behaviors that a nurse would do anyways, so I guess I am kind of stuck on where to begin.

Can anyone give me an example of what you would consider caring besides the usual stuff?

Thanks!

[memphispanda, RN]

Don't discount those things that are jsut "part of the job". They are as important as anything else.

Did you make sure your patient was warm enough or cool enough? Did you fluff their pillow? Make sure their blankets were not a tangly mess? Did you help them get comfortable? Did you listen to them? All of those things are examples of caring behaviors.

[zambezi, BSN, RN]

I agree with memphispanda....it is the little things and the "usual stuff" that go into caring, it is these things that the patient will remember. In addition to what panada said, I think that part of caring is taking the time- even if it is only a few minutes- to teach, encourage and answer questions, a smile when you come into the room, trying to make the patient comfortable and safe during their stay, talking with the family and helping them understand, offering to get them a toothbrush/washcloths to wash up, respecting the patient their beliefs and values, valuing their privacy, there are so many other things as well. That is the neatest part about the whole concept of caring, it is those little unorchastrated things that you do just to do, because it is human, and because your patients are real people with feelings and emotions.

[psychomachia]

Try to remember that they (your profs) want you to integrate some "theory" of nursing in whatever you write. Go to this page, Nursing as Caring and read the summary of what "caring" means in the academic world of nursing. Then, try to make up some mumbo-jumbo about how it applied to the patient you "cared" for by "answering the call for nursing" and how your "shared lived experience" was an "expression of nursing, with an intentional and authentic presence between yourself (nurse) and the person (patient) recognized as living caring and growing in caring."

I'm serious, write some crap like that and they'll eat it up...

[traumaRUs, MSN, APRN]

I'm an ER RN and I think talking, explaining and educating the family and patient (if possible) is caring. Also (my pet peeve) giving good oral care is caring too.