Mother's Day

jadelpn, LPN, EMT-B

When you become a nurse, you take the knowledge that you have acquired, start on a journey, apply what you learn and hope for the best outcome for a patient.

When you become a mother, it is not much different. Only that when it is your child, you are personally invested in the positive outcome.

When you are a nurse, you are professionally invested in the best outcome.

I wish that motherhood came with evidence based practice! But with mothering, you can put whatever theory to the test as you would like, and children take on a life of their own, so the outcome is not as clear as one would like or hope for. And yet, we are invested. We want our children to be happy. To be fufilled, to be ok with their choices, and to dream.

For our patients, we would want less sufferring, for our patients not to be sad, not be dysfunctional, to be whole. The outcome is not always as clear as we would like it to be, no matter the theory behind our actions.

So not much different. Siblings, if you will. Nursing takes the most primative form of caring about the outcome of someone, and shapes it into a burning desire to make a difference in someone's life. Even those of you who say that nursing is not what it is cracked up to be, that you are tired, burnt, disgusted....those are often some feelings that mother's feel as well. Yet, with a renewed conviction thinks perhaps they will do it again another day if for nothing else but to make someone else's life different. Better. To make it whole.

The work we all do is important. It takes the life of another and alters it. So even when feeling discouraged, know in your heart and mind that even if the outcome is not as you would have liked it to be, you made a difference. You did what you needed to do, then you got better, fought harder. You take pause in the fact that what you do, good/bad or indifferent is real. Much like a mother.

On this Mother's Day, like every day, it is also important to remember that each patient that we come across has a mother. And at one time, perhaps in the moment or many years ago, for one split second, or never-ending devotion, the patient presented to you is someone's beloved child. That no matter what the circumstance from conception to now, someone mothered this child. Even in the most un-ideal circumstances, someone, somewhere brought this child into the world in a loving act. As nuses. we sometimes have to then remember that compassion, even if the patient presents in a not so ideal form.

It takes courage to be a mother. It takes courage to be a nurse. Courage is measured in the things you know, but that you forge ahead and do anyways. Never doubt your worth, as well as never doubting the worth of the patient in front of you.

Happy nurse's week to all of my fellow nurses. And top it off with a Happy Mother's Day to all my fellow nurses who are also Moms.