...------------------------------------------------- How the Nurse Feels “As the nurse, I have eighty-eight lines, appear in eleven of twenty-four scenes, and, unfortunately, I have no costume changes. From what I know, most of Shakespeare’s women don’t”(page 2, line 12) is a quote from the teenager Tess, the main character in Greg Changnon’s short story How the Nurse Feels from 1998. Everyone can relate to the grief of Romeo and Juliet, but the nurse does not play a significant part in Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet, which makes it hard for Tess to imagine how the nurse feels and therefore how to play her role. In this short story, however, Changnon uses symbolism to throw light on feelings from characters we might miss out on when we normally read or watch the world famous tragedy. How the nurse feels is about the high-school student, Tess, who is playing the role of the nurse in the school production of Romeo and Juliet. In the very middle of her struggle finding out how to act her part, there is another drama taking place outside. Bad weather conditions have postponed the play and cancelled school, and suddenly Tiger De Soto, a minor performer in the play, has disappeared. Tess seems like a typical high school student, living a life with the relatable struggles of a teenager; parents with expectations, boring environment and confusing romantic feelings. She seems attracted to the boy Tiger, whom she barely knows and when she finds out that he has disappeared, she...
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...The short story “How the Nurse Feels” by Greg Changnon was first published in 1998. It treats of universal themes such as growing up and how the transition from child to adult is not always an easy or desired process. The adult world can seem alien and impossible to identify with but through the story it is told how a single event can alter the perception of it. It also deals with the boundary between fiction and reality which can be quite blurred especially at this transitioning age. While fiction can help us understanding the world around us, the short story also stresses the importance of life experience in order to fully understand the fiction. These are all things the main character, Tess, has to deal with. Tess is playing the Nurse in her school’s staging of William Shakespeare’s “Romeo and Juliet”. She is a fifteen year-old girl who lives in Winetka with her parents. Her father is a priest and her mother owns a fabric store. It is a very isolated community which bores and frustrates Tess: “Neither of them […] know what it’s like to have your whole world contained in the tenblock radius of the church, school, home, and the fabric store. This, I know, is why I act. I have to feel what it’s like in somebody else’s skin.”1 Tess desperately wants to leave Winetka and craves a more exiting existence in New York: “I want to worry about rent and the smelly man who sits on my doorstep. I want to have three lovers at three different theatres, one suicidal and the other two Caribbean”2...
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...27, 2012 Examining Nursing Practice: A Personal Framework After graduating nursing school in 2008, I started working as an Operating Room nurse (OR) at a level one trauma center, which specializes in neurosurgery. I now scrub and circulate neurology, urology, ENT (ear, nose and throat), and plastic surgeries. I am also a charge nurse and in charge of orienting new nurses and graduate nurses. The OR is fast paced and challenging. One never knows what is going to come through the doors, but you have to be ready at any given moment, to do anything from removing tonsils to clipping an aneurysm, in a matter of minutes. In the OR, often times the team gets caught up in tasks that need to be performed to get the case going, and sometimes forget that a human being is lying on the table with both physical and emotional needs. That is why, I teach my new graduates and everyone that I precept to act like it is a member of their family lying on the table. Often times just a friendly word or a smile before the patient is put under anesthesia can make a world of difference. If there is time, I also update the family to what is going on in the OR and try to answer any questions that I am able to. Sometimes surgeries last for sixteen hours; just an update can mean the world of difference to an already anxious family. Some OR nurses might tell you that their nursing is more focused because they have little interaction with the family and patient, but I try to give holistic care...
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...Lindsey Hedden NRS 4343 Community Health Paper How a Community Health Nurse Can Make a Difference According to Stanhope and Lancaster, community health nursing is defined as “nursing practice in the community, with the primary focus on the health care of individuals, families, and groups in a community with the goal to preserve, protect, and promote or maintain health” (Stanhope & Lancaster, 2002). Throughout this semester, I have had numerous opportunities to witness a community health nurse in action. Throughout my nursing career, I have had the opportunity to experience the many different “hats” nurses wear. I have been able to see how nurses have the power to make differences in the lives of others. I feel as if community nurses have an enormous number of chances to do this. Because community nurse have more direct contact with individuals, groups, families, etc, there are more chances to make a difference. Before I became a nursing student, I was always a strong believer in showing compassion and love for others. I have always felt that by going the extra mile to show someone how much you care, you can help them more than anything money can buy. Now that I am near the beginning of my own nursing career, I am a much stronger believer in this personal theory of mine. Too often, I think we as health care professionals concentrate on what we can earn for ourselves rather than what we can do for others. We tend to get lost in the money, the protocols, and the advancement...
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...skills in order to communicate well with patients to find out what is wrong with their healthy status and provide them with the right treatment. So in order for nurse to be nominate to be one of the top, needs to know how to communicate will with patients?, How to explain things effectively to ensure that patients understood their status?. In this assignment I am going to discuss the definition of therapeutic communication, aspects of communication, skills for effective therapeutic communication, nursing barriers and last but not least having some strategies to overcome these barriers. What is Communication? “Communication is the process by which meanings are exchanged between people through the use of a common set of symbols." (Bhardwaj, 2009) the process of these thought comes either by speaking or writing. This process of exchange divided into two parts which are verbal and non-verbal communication. Verbal communication means acting through words which means in brief definition spoken, rather than written. Lots of people think that communication is something easy, since they only need to speak their native language, in contrast communication is that need to be study to be efficient at even if it is only required the person to speak their language, because it’s not a matter of how to speak the words, it’s a matter of how to use the appropriate and respectful words in order...
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...a young age telling my mother that I wanted to be a nurse just like her, she told me to choose a different path. Her response surprised me but did not stop me from pursuing my dream. I am passionate about being a nurse and what that role means. With recent frustrations with others in this profession I finally understood why my mother told me to choose a different path. I have always believed that being a nurse is an honor, that we are the voice of not only our patients but the communities they come from. When you continually work by those who do not share those beliefs and values it can break you. A nurse that truly cares and understands how important that role in society is and is the type of nurse that continues on regardless of the values of others. Even though at times I saw my mother’s spirit crushed, she never quit, she continued on, many times coming home late because she was grocery shopping for one of her patient’s family. My mother did not want me to follow the same path as her, not because she did not love nursing but because she did not want me to ever feel defeated. My mother taught me what it truly means to be a nurse, that it is a selfless path. Nursing is more than a profession, rather it is a continually evolving role that requires a lifelong commitment to serve. Core of Nursing The goal of every nurse is to provide quality care; it is the core of nursing. In order to accomplish this goal, the nurse must have an understanding of what is required of them;...
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...a clinical nurse specialist and how she feels the role of nursing has changed over the years. Nursing Role in the Healthcare Delivery System The role of nursing is a dynamic one. It continues to change day by day, year by year since the days Florence Nightingale when nursing was “invented,” if you will. Beverly Glick a clinical nurse specialist in a busy level three-trauma center has witnessed firsthand many of these changes. Beverly Glick has been a nurse for 38 years. Twenty of those years, she has worked in the emergency department (ED) (Glick, 2009). During her time as a nurse, Beverly has witnessed many changes in the role of nursing. She recalls how nurses used to sit at the nurses’ station and smoke. She remembers times when as soon as the physicians rounded the corner in the department the nurses would jump from their chairs so the physicians could sit down (Glick, 2009). Beverly recognizes that nurses are more respected members of the inter-disciplinary team than they ever used to be. Physicians are respecting their opinions and clinical judgment more than ever. She also recognizes along with that comes and increased responsibility for knowledge. She states “nurses are required to know more now than they ever did and be right about it” (Glick, 2009). Beverly also noted that with this more trusting relationship with the physicians that nurses today have more autonomy than ever before which is “good and bad.” She feels that some nurses take this...
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...As you are aware, Barbara Norris has recently been promoted as nurse manager in the General Surgery Unit (GSU) here at Eastern Massachusetts University Hospital (EMU). She has inherited a unit with the lowest employee satisfaction scores and highest employee turnover rate among all the departments at the hospital. GSU is known for its culture of confrontation, blaming, and favoritism. Additionally, the staff that has remained is dissatisfied, unmotivated and does not function as a team to deliver care. As a result of the lack of unity, GSU’s patient satisfaction scores, although average, have been declining steadily over the past few years. One of Barbara’s main objectives for accepting the position was the challenge to try to turn the unit around. While Barbara has a tough job ahead of her, she is off to a good start in showing the staff that she is genuinely interested in hearing their problems and concerns. The purpose of this memo is to analyze the main issues in the unit and offer recommendations to solve them. The Off-site In an off-site workshop that Barbara conducted earlier this week, the GSU staff revealed to her several problems in the unit. Megan Mahoney, who had only been on the unit for one year, expressed her disappointment with some of the senior nurses. She said, “You make me feel like I am doing everything wrong but won’t address me directly or in a straightforward manner” and “you said you were tired of me and all of my questions and called me a pest...
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...silence indicated to the patient that the nurse expects him to speak, to take the initiative, to communicate that which is most pressing. It gives the patient the opportunity to collect and organize his thoughts, to think through a point, or to consider introducing a topic of greater concern to him than the one being discussed. A positive and accepting silence can be a valuable therapeutic tool. (1) It encourages the patient to talk; (2) directs his thoughts to the task at hand--the consideration of his problem; (3) reduces the pace of the interview when either the nurse or the patient is pressing or pushing too hard; (4) gives the patient time to consider alternative courses of action, delve deeply into his feelings, or weigh a decision; (5) and allows the patient to discover that he can be accepted even though he is silent, that even though he is shy and quiet, he has worth and is respected by another person. Much nonverbal communication occurs during these interludes. The nurse needs to be alert to what she is communicating as well as perceiving. Even momentary loss of interest can be interpreted as indifference. Schwartz and Schockley state that the utilization of silence is often difficult for nursing personnel, since they think that nothing is happening and that they are wasting their time. In long periods of silence, they may become bored and their attention wanders from the patient. If the nurse could observe the patient and herself carefully...
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...Being a nurse for the past 20 years has been a very interesting and very difficult thing for many different reasons throughout the years. A year ago I decided to make a commitment to obtain my graduate degree in nursing. At the time of my decision I had no idea how I would accomplish this working a fulltime job, being out of school for nearly 20 years and not being financially secure at this point in my life as I would like. Regardless of all the above listed I went out on faith and enrolled in school at OKWU and during this little time I feel that I have a connection with OKWU. In this paper I plan to show my similar views with OKWU mission statement, school of nursing, collision points and how they will relate to my graduate education and professional practice. I would like to quote OKWU mission statement “The pursuit of truth … as an objective, attainable reality grounded in the person and example of Jesus Christ and anchored in the Bible” I believe in this statement in my everyday life, I feel that this statement personally applies to me regarding my pursuit in obtaining my master’s in nursing. I know that I had to be totally grounded in faith and trust in the my faith that I would and could for sure achieve my master’s degree as long as I keep my faith in the Lord. First I will address the views of the school of nursing and how I was completely shocked when I read its components of the program and how similar our...
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...Ethical Framework in Practice Reading the “Bioethics of NBC’s ER” this writer feels the ethical implication of breaching the confidentiality of not only Andrea but everyone in the school who participated in the sex group. Ethical Implication Of A Breach Of Confidentiality A breach of confidentiality is a disclosure to a third party, without patient consent or court order, of private patient information ("Patient confidentiality," 2010). Before Nurse Hathaway can disclose any information about Andrea health to anyone including her parents, Andrea must sign a release of information which can be verbal or written. This writer feels that when a minor informs an adult or someone they feel they can trust in a situation that can be harmful to the minor child it’s important to explain to the child how important the situation can be to his or her health and inform the child at that time of a consent being need to obtain the necessary medical attention that may be needed. During the disclosure of information the adult must inform the child that under certain situation the parent may or may not be notified depending of the severity of the problem. If Nurse Hathaway breaches the confidence of Andrea she may no longer trust someone she beliefs and could confine in to keeping a secret. She may also be afraid to seek help in the future for thinking a breach of confidentiality may occur again. This writer feels if medical providers breach confidentiality, it would be difficult to trust...
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...After the fishing trip the patients are empowered to stand up for themselves. After the trip Cheswick feels brave enough to yell at Nurse Ratched for withholding his cigarettes, McMurphy stomps to the nurse’s station and punches the glass. The craziness of the scene causes McMurphy to react in a way that no one will normally do. He punches the glass and gives Cheswick his cigarette in order to make him quiet again. In this metaphor the glass pane represents Nurse Ratched’s protection and power over the patient's. McMurphy is able to symbolically break her power with his bare hands by taking an action that no other patient would take. He dramatically resolves the situation in a disruptive manner. When McMurphy returns from shock therapy he acts like a mindless human to make Nurse Ratched feel like she has finally conquered him. All the patients believe that he has finally given up and that Nurse Ratched has gained all the power. But he suddenly changes back to his normal self to make Nurse Ratched lose all her power. This is a motif because McMurphy shows his rebellious side and that he will not let Nurse Ratched control all the patients. It also shows that he will not let a simple machine take control of him....
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...the professional nursing organization I did my research on, AWHONN. AWHONN represents nurses and the support staff who care for pregnant and laboring women. There is a fee to belong to this organization. The sole purpose of the organization is to provide education and safe evidence-based practices for the nurses in the field of Labor & delivery and postpartum care and recovery, and obstetrics. They provide educational material and several journals for their members. Some of the educational resources are free and others can be bought at a reduced cost. Several times a year, AWHONN hosts conventions and provides lectures and continuing nurse education classes. This also allows for nurses to network with other care providers in their field of interest. The mission of this organization is not focused on all nursing, rather it is only focused on nurses working in women’s health and specifically for those working with women in their child bearing years. (AWHONN, 2015) The Washington State Board of Nursing Commission regulates and maintains competency and quality of nursing among registered nurses, licensed practical nurses, advanced registered nurse practitioner and nurse technicians. The job of the board is more than education. It is more about regulation. The board enforces licensing and evaluating the nurses at time of licensure or renewal. They are required to monitor that nurses are completing their continuing education competencies. The board also is responsible...
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... Watson's Theory of Human Caring Theory of caring, Watson has taught me how healthcare providers should practice loving, and kindness to our patients and others. Watson’s theory is not only for patients, but it is for everyone who works in the healthcare industry. Loving, and caring for each other would establish a trusting relationship that will be remembered for a long time. There are four carative factors that I practice on daily basis which they are the humanistic-altruistic system of values, development of sensitivity to oneself and others, promoting and accepting the expression of positive and negative feelings, and the supportive, protective, and/or corrective mental, physical, societal, and spiritual environment. I am going to represent an example of how I have been practicing these four carative factors on daily nursing basis. Caring Moment Watson (2006) described caring as, “acknowledged as transpersonal, involved with the one caring as well as the one being cared for, and it is mutual” (p 90). According to Watson in the caring moment, this moment can become a part of our life history for each other, and the relationship will form deeper between nurse and patient. The caring moment will initiate a healing ability. Nurses will need to show that they really care for their patients during this historical moment by listening to patient attentively, acknowledge how the patients feel, and make eye contact. Alligood (2010) stated, “Nursing goal in caring process...
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...patients view and also the nurses. Many people would support a side that nurses working these long 12-hour shifts could lead to accidents in the working environment. There are also people who would argue that these shifts benefit the patient/nurse relationship, and is more beneficial because there is only three shifts per week. Nurses should not be allowed to work 12-hour shifts because, the physical and emotional impact on their bodies is too debilitating, and the length of the...
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