Thankful for those of you willing to share your wisdom

Published Nov 26, 2013

6 Posts

I am a non-traditional student (I have an MS in another field and have been working for many years) returning to school to study nursing. I have been truly shocked by the lack of willingness of some nurses at clinical sites to share information, allow observation, or merely interact with students. While I have heard the "nurses eat their young" nonsense, this needs to change. The most trusted profession! Perhaps the most caring! Yet modeling lack of respect, judgment, and intolerance? What?! We are not stupid and we are not lazy. We want to be like you! We want to know what you know!

On the other hand, of course, are those nurses deserving of special gratitude this Thanksgiving. Thank you, so much, for explaining what you were doing so we could connect the dots between the textbook and this amazing field! Thank you for allowing us to watch when you performed a simple procedure that was new to us! Thank you for telling the patient that she was "lucky" because we were there to help take care of her that day! Thank you for the patience that it took to walk us through and observe our first injection! Thank you for the smile! Thank you for the words of encouragement! Thank you for sharing the story of your own nursing school days with us! Thank you for not treating us like children when we ask "stupid" questions or start putting the patient's briefs on backwards. Thank you for allowing us to perform the controls on the glucometers at the beginning of your shift... yes, we are impressed that you can do it so much more quickly but it gives us confidence to even do simple tasks around the unit. We want to feel valuable!

And the hugest thanks of all goes to the nurse "aides" who are actually RNs who can't yet get nursing jobs. You seem to be most humble, kind, and willing to teach us. Thank you so very much. We hope that as you move up that you retain that kindness. It means so much to us. Ironically, you are the nurses- not even working as such- who often model the values of nursing best.

HAPPY THANKSGIVING!!