Ramona - The Sparks Keep Me Motivated

Ramona -







When I was in high school, I took a test to see what career choice would be the best fit for me, and I scored really high in healthcare-related fields. My grandmother was a registered nurse, and I’d heard some of her stories and was intrigued by them. So I decided to give nursing a try. If you go straight to college from high school, you often don’t really know why you made a particular decision, but it sometimes ends up being the right one. That was certainly the case for me.

It’s the sparks that keep me motivated in my job. By that I mean those “aha!” moments where a patient, or their family, or another nurse understands something a little bit better because of my impact. Seeing that something I said or did makes a difference in somebody else’s life is what keeps me going, day after day.

One of the great things about being a nurse is that you really get to feel the impact of the work you do. In nursing, it’s not just about money; it’s about emotions, too. I feel pain with people, I feel joy, I feel fear with them – the whole gamut. There aren’t many other jobs where you get to experience that.

For many years, I worked with kids who suffered from chronic illnesses. During that time, I had a lot of patients pass away, and it just gets heart wrenching after a while. Eventually, it was time to try something different, because I knew I couldn’t take much more of it emotionally.“One of the great things about being a nurse is that you really get to feel the things you do.” People talk about maintaining professional boundaries, but the reality is that there’s this gray area into which people may ebb and flow. Sometimes, you just really like the family, or the child, or they really like you. I lost many patients, and in a couple of cases, I was part of their death process as well. It was an honor to be there for them in that way, a real blessing, but it also made it very difficult for me to have genuine relationship with patients who were new to the program. I found it necessary to protect myself emotionally. You can’t help but be reminded that their diagnosis is life-threatening, and you wonder if you are going to lose them too.

We had a great team of nurses in that unit, and we were all very supportive of each other. Sometimes that meant just being there if someone needed to cry. Sometimes it meant going for a walk. Sometimes it meant cracking jokes, and in some cases even engaging in a little gallows humor.

There was one time when we had a patient pass away, and [THE FAMILY? ANOTHER NURSE?] wanted to be able to say goodbye. My co-worker and I went to the morgue and dressed the little boy, so that [THEY] could visit. While we were waiting for [THE FAMILY?], our sense of humor became quite odd. An outside observer might have thought we were just very strange. But we said to each other, “Let’s keep going with this, because if we don’t, we’re going to melt down.” That’s how we coped with the situation. The social worker and I had this bond, we shared that experience – a really sad, difficult experience – and what got us through it was this weird moment of humor. Today we can’t believe we did that, but it was the only way for us to get through it emotionally. And we needed to get through it (in private of course) so we could better be there for the sake of the family.

I attended a conference a while back called “Nursing from the Heart,” and one of the speakers discussed how as nurses we think we always have to be tough, and always need to put on a good face, when in reality we’re just human. Her message was “it’s okay to feel.” We carry within us all these emotions, such as disappointment when we aren’t able to make someone better, and sadness when we lose someone. We don’t allow ourselves to embrace those emotions. But it’s part of who we are as humans. And I think now more organizations across the nation are recognizing this and trying to be supportive, whereas when I first started in the field, the behavior expectation was to contain our emotions and it was not okay to cry, to have let alone express those feelings.

But those feelings are real, we have them and we have to be able to anticipate our needs and the needs of each other. Some days are going to be terrible, that’s for sure. But you have to hold on to those things that you love. For example, I have a treasure box filled with cards and pictures from my patients. When I’m having a bad day, I’ll open up my treasure box and look through the things that people have given to me. My treasure box helps me get and stay clear about my purpose here.

I remember clearly the moment my thinking changed from, “I just have to get through this shift,” to, “Wow, I can make a difference.” I was working in the hospital, and I had made a connection with this one family, or at least it felt that way to me. Then they came back the day after they were discharged with a box of figs[?], and [THE LITTLE GIRL? HER MOTHER?] had made me a picture for me. She had written, “The most beautiful colors are green, because that is God’s gift to us. Its all over the Earth, its beautiful, it means life, and you just really showed life to us.” The picture was made with fabric paints, and it was just a cheery, bright, pretty color, with a huge heart in the middle of it. I couldn’t believe that someone would come back to the hospital to give me something they had made with their own hands. It was very overwhelming and almost embarrassing. I didn’t want to seem more special than anybody else, because I don’t believe I am. But I think for that patient, at that moment, I might have been.

I still have that picture.

Power Strategies: Influence, Dignity, Passion
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