bobhess

Yes, sorry, those of you who don't want to care for a patient with ebola, but that's what nurses do.

I'm a 64 yr-old executive for nursing & alllied health CE with nurse.com & continuingeducation.com and the founder and webmaster for sharedgovernance.org, who had an endoscopic AAA repair at Cooper MC two weeks ago. I'm also a former critical care nurse. These attributes colored my patient care experience in a big way. I knew way too much about nursing, but nothing about being a patient. About a dozen nurses cared for me over only a 36-hr period (I used to care for patients having open procedures for this over 7 to 10 days). Every nurse was excellent. I mist up thinking just about them. I am the sort of patient who needed to know everything: what was normal and what wasn't. I was hard-wired overnight, laying in a private room with my iPhone and iPad in bed with me, mostly somewhere between fascinated, stoned, and terrified. One nurse, in particular, Holly, cared for me for 12 hours over the night shift. She was always present when I needed her, just sometimes to talk, and absent, but available when I was trying to rest. There was a problem with my mean arterial pressure, and I needed a bump in my med. She explained everything, maybe knowing that my eyes would be glued on the monitor until things were corrected. They were. The nurses at Cooper in Camden, NJ are going for Magnet status and had their appraiser visit last week. I hope they get it. I wrote a lengthy testimonial to their CNO and named every nurse I could remember. I hope that every patient receives the care I received from such competent and caring nurses. I experienced the gold standard.

If there's another good lit review on shared governance (I had one in my dissertation, but it's old), I'd love to see it. I might be able to contact the author and post in on the Forum for Shared Governance's site.