beatricehamp74: Nurses: My Better Half

Saturday, 29 September 2012

Nurses: My Better Half

Contributor: “Dr. J”
Dr. J offers his irreverent, slightly irrelevant, but possibly useful opinions on health and fitness. A Florida surgeon and fitness freak with a black belt in karate, he runs 50 miles a week and flies a Cherokee Arrow 200.

(CC) University of Salford/Flickr

In a way, the doctor-nurse pairing is like a working marriage, with the marriage vow of “for better or worse” applying to the patient’s medical situations and the long, slow climb back to health. The nurse, my better half, is the supreme caretaker and cheerleader of that journey.

I happened to see a television commercial recently about nurses that I really liked, and it made me think of some of the many experiences that I’ve had with my better half in my professional life or as a patient.

I suppose my first experience with a nurse was being filled with fear, as that woman in white was responsible for giving me “shots” at the pediatrician’s office!

I think, however, that even then, I didn’t have any negative feelings for those nurses, as they were always very kind and considerate when dealing with that scared little kid.

There was a time in medical school where I was examining a woman with a female nurse in attendance. I made a very dumb statement about a normal physiological sign I noticed, and that wonderful nurse immediately said the perfect thing to both educate me and not embarrass me at the same time. I thanked her profusely after the exam.

In my surgical residency, I did a six-month stint on the anesthesia service. I was assigned as an understudy to a nurse anesthetist for the first month before being turned loose on patients by myself. He did a wonderful job in teaching me the basics, how to safely anesthetize people and bring them back alive at the end of the surgeon’s work, but never too soon. When I needed an operation, I felt very secure and confident in the nurse that did the anesthesia for me.

As a trauma surgeon, I’ve spent a lot of time in emergency rooms working side by side with nurses. These nurses work under tremendous stress with calm, sure and rapid actions, and they are an integral part of that lifesaving team every day.

I remember watching a nurse do CPR chest compressions relentlessly for almost one hour on a young man in the surgical intensive care unit. He had been in a severe motorcycle accident, and it had been touch-and-go with him for two weeks. I saw her later that night, exhausted and sobbing, because he was gone.

I was talking recently with a nurse that works in our local bone-marrow transplant unit. That is such a heartbreaking position to have to work at, with too many patients spending the last days of their lives in that situation. She had such a warm and caring nature. After I told her that, she responded saying, “Thank you, but I feel I belong in the job I have and I am grateful that I found that in my life.”