NursingZen

Nurses occupy a unique position…

Nurses meet the patient where they’re at…

As bad as it might sound to have to work every other weekend, it’s a relief compared to working on the weekdays. On my unit, the weekdays are always frenzied and sometimes terrible, but the weekends usually are a respite.

Tonight I worked with a nice, hardworking team and had stable, interesting patients. Of note were two patients who had never been hospitalized before.

**Mr. Lee (name changed) is a small, wiry elderly Chinese-speaking man with skin smooth as a baby’s. He came in, reluctantly, because of chest pain but has no significant medical history or problems. He takes no medications at home, has no hearing or vision problem, no dentures, no diabetes, nothing. “Wah!” (Cantonese for “wow”) was my response to him. He’s anxious about being in the hospital, agreed to come in only for observation, and declined the ordered medications that are “protocol” for our patients. I told him a little about the meds but I didn’t dispute him – after 79 years of not taking any meds, it makes sense that he doesn’t want to start now.

**Ms. Nelson (name changed) is a talkative woman with spunky short hair. She also came in reluctantly because of chest pain, has no significant medical history or problems, and takes no Western medications. She says she’s been successfully treating herself with complementary modalities and herbal medicines. She also declined the ordered medications. She expressed distress and anger toward the doctor who admitted her, saying that he has no conception or understanding of integrated or complementary modalities and that he scoffed at her anxiety toward the treatments he offered her. As she read her poetry, chanted her “Ohm”s, and listened to music, I understood precisely how alienated she feels from the way medicine and healing is practiced and communicated in the hospital and in our society.

For a split second, I felt “wrong” for not pushing these two patients to follow the hospital’s protocol of treatments and interventions, especially since I know that in my position I “represent” hospital-based medicine, but within the same split second, I realized that even though I’m a nurse in the system, I don’t need to agree with the perspective that medication and intervention are always good, for everyone alike.

In truth, I believe our society is too medicalized and our hospitals do not provide enough individualized care. As someone who has grown up in diverse family and social contexts, I believe in an integration of healing methods and perspectives. Some people might say that I’m working in the wrong field then, but suddenly I’m seeing quite sharply the “unique position that nurses occupy.” You hear about this “unique position” throughout nursing school, but it’s a great moment when you actually experience it. Certainly there are safety reasons to follow some protocols, but we can also use our judgment to fudge or work around them to “meet the patient where they’re at” — another banal-until-experienced nursing school mantra!