Sadly, nursing just isn’t the same. Nursing isn’t the same as it used to be.  What happened?

Nursing isn’t what I thought it would be.  Why not?

I want to be a nurse, but I don’t want to be the one that works at the bedside. I want to be a nurse practitioner. I want to do quality assurance. I want to work for an insurance company.  I want….

Do you fall into one of these or maybe one I haven’t mentioned?

I know nursing is not the same as when I started in nursing.  I know that nursing is a special profession because we have many options in terms of fields we can practice in.  I also believe that unless you have the experience of working at the “bedside” in whatever specialty you choose you don’t really get what it’s like caring for the “patient” in their own world. This can make it hard to know what actions to implement with the patient that will be effective. 

When I started nursing I worked “at the bedside” and I loved giving backrubs.  And you say, “What’s a back rub?”  Well they are what comes after a bath on the day shift or when giving h.s. care on the evening shift or when a patient can’t sleep at 3:00 am on the midnight shift. During this task we had time to communicate with the patient and really do a thorough assessment, discuss problems and possible nursing interventions. 

I’m not saying it was without its stresses or time consuming-routine tasks that I really did not like doing.  But it didn’t seem as stressful or undoable as it is today.  The whole world and pace of life has ramped up 1000x, not just nursing.  Everything we do today is at warp speed.  But I believe if we could eliminate all the barriers that we have control over then we would have more time to do what we enjoy about nursing.  Bullying takes not only the time for the actual encounter, but the time it consumes our thinking, worrying, complaining and efforts to regain our equilibrium so we can function.

Are you concerned?

We don’t need to rally, march or get involved in some other demonstration to make our point.  We can do it one nurse at a time, one facility at a time and share our successes.  Once we prove and demonstrate success everyone will rush to do the same.

So, come, come, come to the new Powerful Nurse Warrior Group and take part in the success of what we can do. This group is in beta and is free to join! Nurses who are committed to nursing and seeing it return to a profession that is respected because we respect ourselves and others sign up now.