I would be willing to bet by the title that the reader here will think this is a rant, but it is quite the opposite. This came about because the longer I spend here on AN, and the longer I work in a hospital, the more my heart breaks to see how some of our patients are treated.
I am grateful for older patients:
Some may say it is time to let them go, to stop trying, and give up. If the patient and family do not want to stop, I want to be the nurse that agrees to keep fighting with them.
I am grateful for overweight patients:
When they are brought to tears by embarrassment, when they spend day after day listening to snide remarks by the staff and turn angry when they have had enough of health care providers complaining about them, I want to be the nurse to give them some dignity.
I am grateful for drug-addicted patients:
Some don't want to quit, and won't. Some want to quit, and can't. When others see a "junky" or a person who could never amount to anything, I want to be the nurse to see potential in the human being trapped inside an addict's body.
I didn't become a nurse to take care of only the patients I deemed worthy of my care. I became a nurse to help people. All people. I'm not here to judge them, and I am lucky to have a job. If it weren't for these patients, imagine how much worse the nursing job market would be. I am lucky to be able to help people who need it most, and make a living doing it.
On a side-note, I am also grateful for all of the wonderful, fantastic, and talented nurses!
