At 43, I'm a nursing student. Why am I doing this? It's because I have volunteered at a nursing home for two years, not including all the years as a child I visited a nursing home across the street from my house. It's because I love talking to people, love hearing their stories. Young, old, black, white or other, I love talking to them all.
And I stick out like a stone in my nursing class. I think they are all in it for the money. For the most part, the people in my class do not seem interested in talking to the patients when we are at clinicals. A few are condescending, and some are borderline rude; but most do not seem interested in the patients as people.
This worries me for several reasons. One: if I become involved with the patients as people, talk to them about their lives, etc., will I be comfortable doing intimate things for them, like giving bedbaths and/or enemas? Will they feel uncomfortable having someone they connect with, doing these things?
Does anyone reading this understand where I'm coming from? I shudder to think of some of my fellow nursing students being my nurse one day.
