Marcia - Humor and Self-Care

Marcia -







I work on the cardiology floor as a staff nurse. We take care of everyone from a 13-year-old who overdosed on drugs to a 107-year-old woman who's had a heart attack. We never know who's going to be there when we arrive. Once we had a pregnant 18-year-old who had overdosed on her heart medications, so we had two patients to worry about. Teenagers really tug at my heart.

My first responsibility is to give the medication the patients need, and then to offer comfort, information, and sometimes a little something to laugh at. I love the humor part, because I'm a clown, a registered clown. I love to play Let's Pretend and to escape into a role. I have a werewolf character, an Easter bunny, and a Frosty the Snowman. Becoming one of these characters allows me to escape temporarily from too much thinking for awhile. When I come back, my edges aren't quite so raw. I take care of myself that way.

I need that kind of self care, because working in cardiology can be emotionally draining."Look at yourself, see the imperfections, and laugh. That's the rule I live by." We had a 33-year-old woman who was riding in the car with her husband, and she just collapsed. Help arrived within ten minutes, but she was brain dead. She stayed with us for two weeks until her body let go. Her two children were just little--three and five. Of course they didn't understand. All they knew was that mommy wouldn't wake up.

On the opposite end, we had a fellow who coded. I was the first responder, and we worked on him for an hour and a half. We got him back. But when he got to our floor after his stay in ICU, he swore at us up one side and down the other for saving his life. That really cut.

So I deal with hard things in cardiology. It's funny, because my first impressions of nursing were, "Ooh, yuck. You do what?" But then I started working as a nurse's aide, and eventually I came around to thinking, "OK, I can do this. There are other areas of nursing where I don't have to be so involved with blood and other body fluids." But somehow I haven't quite made my way there yet! I'm working on it.

At some point, I'd like to move into cardiac rehab or diabetes education. I would still have the face-to-face contact that means so much to me. Because I'm a diabetic myself, and my mother died of diabetes, it's a personal issue, and I'd love to help people manage their disease. Educating people to avoid an onset of the disease, and helping them live more fully within the confines of the disease process--that would be very satisfying.

I try to educate myself about medical issues. A group of us have a journal club which meets over the lunch hour. We read articles on a specific topic and then discuss what we've read. That way, we keep up on the latest research evidence for a particular part of our practice.

When I go to a conference, I try to bring back information that will help our staff. We have a tendency to do things the way they've always been done, but we need to keep up with all the changes. Evidence-based practice, mentorships, clinical leadership--these are important topics in the nursing field right now.

"Every RN is a clinical leader," one presenter said at a conference I went to recently. When people hear "clinical leader", they usually think of nurse managers, nurse educators, directors of nursing, and so forth. But she had a different definition: "Every RN is a clinical leader. And you need to step into the role."

I like that definition. For myself, I try to step into the role of clinical leader by reaching out to nurses who are recent graduates and giving them support, both technical and emotional. The other night, a nurse who graduated only six months ago experienced her first patient death. I noticed that she seemed shaken, as if she wanted to cry but wasn't sure if she should. I put my arm around her and just said, "You doing OK?" She sniffed a little bit and said, "Yeah, I think I'm going to be OK now."

All the experienced nurses on a floor need to be mentors, so that no matter who's there, the new nurses can come and say, "I need help" without fear of being ridiculed.

I participate in a college preceptor program. The clinical portion of the students' final quarter is spent one-to-one with an experienced nurse. I have two students right now, and both of them are eager learners and capable workers. Student nurses aren't necessarily young people--some are displaced loggers and mill workers.

I'm also a mentor to the people I work with, because people always need help with something, especially computers. I happen to be a computer system "super user," so if it's acting up, somebody says, "Find Marcia!"

For me, what's central in all I do is to keep the ability to laugh. We get too serious about ourselves, we lose the ability to reach out to someone else. Look at yourself, see the imperfections, and laugh. That's the rule I live by.

Power Strategies: Creativity, Humor, Delight
go back to main page