ERnightsRN

Love all the stories here! I, too, have broken or bended the rules at times. I refuse to become a nurse who is more concerned about the rules than the well-being of my patients. Denying a dying patient the food they crave is just inhuman if there is not a real reason to do so. A cancer patient who finds the food unpalatable isn't going to be hurt by being given a food they want. Several nurses and I went to some great lengths to smuggle a cancer patient's poodle in one night; if I had been fired, the tears of joy she cried would have made it worth it. She died the next day. I believe that we are not just providing physical care, but holistic care - the whole person: mind, body, spirit, emotions - and rules that make that impossible are meant to be bent or broken from time to time! As a side note - one of the docs I work with routinely writes for regular diets for elderly or terminally ill patients. It makes me sad when I give report and hear something like, ""Wait, why isn't he on a restricted diet? He's a heart patient!" (I heard this one regarding a 98 year old patient with terminal cancer who had come into our ER for chest pains and was going to the cardiac unit for observation.) We are nurses, but we are human beings first!

Congrats on your accomplishment! Well done!

i'm getting ready to begin my third year next week in the bsn program at anderson university in indiana. grad date: june 2006. small university...lots of individual attention from profs...i love it there!