why we eat our young

Someone recently told me something that disturbed me deeply. It was something I had heard before, but I chewed on it this time for a while and have been pondering about it since. It involves human nature, and behavior. This was the story:

"A young woman recently graduated from nursing school, and went to work in one of the larger hospitals in one of the largest cities in the state.  She was hired in as a new grad nurse in the NICU (Neonatal Intensive Care Unit) and was excited and enthusiastic about being a nurse.

Her joy was short lived however.  The staff treated her so poorly, and were so rude and unhelpful, that eventually she quit, and now works as a nurse in a non-nursing position, away from the bedside nursing she had dreamed of doing."

Two things disturbed me about this. The obvious thing was her maltreatment from her peers. It isn't the first time I have seen this happen. Over the years I have watched nurses who are rude to the nurses they are training, who don't have patience to take the time to give them the guidance and support they need to become excellent nurses. They often do this because they feel they don't have the time to spend training and mentoring due to their own workload (this is another issue I will talk about at a later time), or they just don't have the skill to teach. Not every nurse is cut out to be a teacher/mentor.

The other aspect that disturbed me is the administrator who hires a new nurse and puts her in a high stress area to work, where extensive, expert skills are needed to keep a patient alive, straight out of nursing school. A nurse does not begin to even understand her job for the first six months, and functions at a very basic level. The book that brought this home to me and taught me a lot about the stages of experience for a nurse was a little book written by Dr. Patricia Benner, From Novice to Expert: Excellence and Practice in Clinical Nursing Practice.  In simple terms, it takes 2 to 3 years to reach the third, or competent, level of nursing doing the same or similar type of work.

To gain experience in an ICU, you have to work in one. This is where it is important to choose the proper preceptor for a new nurse hiring in, give her a workload she can handle with the added responsibility of training a new nurse, and monitor the relationship to make sure that it is the right fit for both nurses. I have to say that in 20+ years of being a nurse in many different areas, I have never seen this happen. EVER.

As I heard the story of the young nurse's disillusionment and resignation from her job, I was saddened, and thought of the saying "nurses eat their young". Simply put, it meant we don't take care of the new nurses coming into the profession, but instead throw them in on their own, with little or no support from the experienced nurses. The meaning hit me full force, and I felt anger and frustration. Anger at the nurses who didn't bring this new nurse on board, and support her as she tried to gain her footing in a highly technical, stressful job. Nurses too burned out, too overworked, too whatever...to see this nurse as the future for all of us, not only nurses, but also patients. Someday those nurses will be patients in a hospital, and facing the same kinds of attitudes they displayed. I wish it wasn't so, but I fear it will be.

The ultimate responsibility though, goes to hospital administrators who don't encourage a different culture of training and mentoring for new nurses. Who think of nurses as a disposable commodity, with access to a never ending supply. As long as nurses are thought of this way, this type of behavior and treatment will go on.

It doesn't happen everywhere, on every unit. But to lose even one new nurse, full of enthusiasm and desire to care for people, is a tragedy. One we will all pay the price for, ultimately.

Let's stop eating our young.

...life is good. ~cath
i am @jonesbabie on twitter

friday reflections

The Friday Reflections prompt that spoke to me today was this one:
Reflect on the week just gone, listing one high point, one low point, and something you have learned.

Human beings are, for the most part, not solitary by nature.  I'm not saying we don't need time alone, but we are social for the most part and want to belong to or be with others.

I have belonged to a wonderful small blogging group for about 2 years or more now.  Diverse in viewpoints and styles, we are scattered across the globe.  Belonging to the group has added a lot of meaning to my life.  I have been mostly inactive for many months now in that group, as I pursued another goal.  I popped in from time to time, read their posts from time to time, and tried to maintain at least a thread of contact until life returned to normal for me.  They were always supportive, even as my creativity dried up so I could focus on the analytical, nursing side of my brain.

I'm a registered nurse for many years now, and last August I decided to pursue certification as a Wound, Ostomy and Continence nurse.  Although I still have the certification exams facing me (three of them!), the high point for me last week was receiving this in my email inbox:

After all those months, a large amount of money put into the course, and three comprehensive finals that about scared the pants off me, I passed!  Normally I don't blow my own horn, but darn I felt like a weight had been lifted off my shoulders.  And the learning experience and knowledge I gained as I completed the theory and practicum (clinical component) was invaluable.

So my low point this past week was the exhausting 7 hours of comprehensive finals I had to pass, and the high point was the email saying it had all paid off.  I've learned that no matter what your age, you should never stop pushing yourself, and reaching that bit beyond your comfort zone for the prize just almost, but not quite, out of reach.  And never give up! 

Now if I can just pass the certification tests...

Have any of you ever experienced extremes of high and low points in the same week?  Life is weirdly wonderful right now...and I am ready to rejoin my wonderful blogging group, and the people who have been so supportive of me.  Thanks PBAUs!

...it may be weird, but life is still good. ~cath
find me @jonesbabie on Twitter

the creative spirit

painted when I was 12 years old

I was asked one time to share what creativity meant to me.  I thought it would be a snap. After all, I've drawn since I could hold a crayon, and painted since I was 12.  Art has always been part of my life.

Well, nothing snapped.   I could discuss my life as an artist ad nauseum, but I decided to dig deeper and take you in a different direction.  As I thought about the question, I realized that the answer, for me, went much deeper.

In 1993 I was operating a small manufacturing business.  One day I went to the local community college, nudged there by a friend who wanted to apply but didn't want to take the entrance exam alone.  The person reading my results recommended I apply to the RN program.  I was ready for a change.

But nursing?  Was she kidding?  I pondered what to do.  While I pondered, I had to take an aptitude test, which was required to ensure you were going into a major that was a good "fit" for your personality.  I took that and scored very high in creativity. No surprise there, since I was born with a pencil in one hand and a paintbrush in the other.  The gentleman reading my results told me I might want to rethink going into nursing.  I can still hear him saying: “nursing is not a career that is creative”.

I didn't listen to him, and I am so thankful I made that decision.  Sixteen years and three nursing degrees later, I know the truth.  My truth, my belief.  

Creativity isn't just about art and creating artistic things. It's about thinking outside the box.    

It's about taking what you know or learn and making something new.  I consider myself creative and versatile.  I love creating art, needlework, photography, and any combination of a myriad of other media I've worked in.  

But being a nurse took my creativity to another plane, to a level that working as an artist alone could never do.  For me, being a nurse was an art.  The art of healing.  

Creativity was the hot pack I made from a wet washcloth in a Ziploc lab specimen bag, heated in a microwave to just the right temperature and applied to an infiltrated IV site to prevent infection and ease the pain of swelling.

Creativity was the armboard I taped to a baby's IV site to give him the maximum amount of arm movement while protecting the site so he could get the antibiotics he desperately needed.

Creativity was positioning a 98 year old woman in bed to make her comfortable and to allow the bedsores covering her emaciated body to heal.  Positions they never taught me in nursing school.

Creativity was applying dressings that couldn’t be removed by a toddler who had been inquisitive and determined enough to pull a pot of boiling eggs off a hotplate, scalding his face, chest and arm.

Every day of the more than 16 years I've worked as a nurse, I've been creative.  I've problem-solved, listened and suggested, and had ideas that come from a place inside my head that is where my creativity springs from.

Creativity is the space outside the box.  The place where a paradigm shift of beliefs takes you from using what you know, to the creation of new knowledge.      

~cath xo

Twitter @jonesbabie