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PROMOTING SUSTAINABILITY THROUGH COLLABORATION

Gina Lypaczewski

Nursing and CHB (courage, heart and brains)

by Gina Lypaczewski

I remember from my nursing school days in the mid- to late 1970s a multitude of catch phrases used to describe nursing and nurses. Among them were “Nurses are patient people,” “Love a nurse for the health of it” and “Nurses call the shots.” Although clever, the slogans did not capture the essence of who nurses are and what they do.

However, while attending a CPR refresher course at a pediatric hospital in the early 1990s, I saw a poster that truly captured the essence of nursing. Beneath a picture of a nurse reading The Wizard of Oz to a boy and girl were the words “Courage, Heart, Brains ... Nursing.” [The poster art, commissioned by honor society member Melodie Chenevert, can be viewed at http://www.pronurse.com/shopcartindex.html.] For me, those simple words sum up the quintessential nature of nursing.

Courage
There are times in a nurse’s career when he or she becomes physically and emotionally exhausted and yet, somehow, finds the strength to go on. Consider nurse administrators who constantly deal with nursing shortages and budget cuts; oncology nurses who witness death almost on a daily basis; pediatric emergency room nurses who admit yet another infant with shaken baby syndrome; operating room nurses who must face the family whose loved one “didn’t make it”; psychiatric nurses who fear for their patients with schizophrenia, because community outpatient programs are underfunded and simply inadequate; staff nurses who push themselves to work a double shift, because they know patients will not get sufficient care otherwise; school nurses who must notify parents and closely monitor students at six schools because of an outbreak of meningitis.

These individuals muster up strength and persevere. Some even become lobbyists and tirelessly fight for their cause at various levels of government. A nursing catalog once advertised a poster that accurately describes the kind of courage one finds in the nursing profession. It said: “Courage does not always roar. Sometimes courage is the quiet voice at the end of the day saying, ‘I will try again tomorrow.’”

Heart
Caring and compassion set nurses apart. Physicians, pharmacists, physiotherapists, respiratory therapists, social workers, dietitians and all other health professionals play an important role in the patient’s life. However, it is the nurse who is there 24 hours a day, seven days a week. It is the nurse who knows the patient best, the one privileged to be part of the patient’s life in a way that no one else can. It is the nurse who is at the bedside to cry with the patient diagnosed with cancer, who holds the patient’s hand during a painful procedure, who encourages the laboring mother, who celebrates with the family when health returns.

After quadruple bypass surgery, late-night television host David Letterman paid homage one evening to those who had cared for him. He introduced his cardiologist and cardiovascular surgeon and thanked them profusely. After those accolades, he introduced the nurse who had cared for him in the intensive care unit. A very emotional Letterman stated that this woman had always been there for him—she gave him medicine when he was in pain; she held his hand when he was scared. Nurses, he declared, are the true heroes of medicine.

Brains
A graduate of a nursing program is intelligent. The course of study is grueling. I, for example, completed a health sciences degree that included physics, organic chemistry, biology and calculus, all prior to three years of study leading to a bachelor’s degree. While attending college, my curriculum continued to be heavy in the sciences—physiology, anatomy, biochemistry and microbiology—but also leaned heavily toward the psychosocial sciences.

Nurses are expected to understand not only the physical being, but also the emotional, mental and spiritual being. Care of individuals hospitalized for, say, a perforated appendix would be uniform if every person were identical. Caring for patients would simply entail completing the same laundry list of assessments and interventions.

This is not the case. Consider the intellectual repertoire a nurse must possess: He or she must adjust communication patterns to the age of the patient, assess pain thresholds, interpret vital signs, consider drug interactions and side effects for a multitude of medications, deliver care based on the patient’s cultural and religious needs, plan for dismissal based on the patient’s resources, and so on. As I often told my nursing students when teaching: “To ensure the best possible care, you must never stop thinking when you are working your shift. Your brain simply cannot stop working, not even for a moment.”

So, as I sit at my desk and look at pewter figures of a lion, a tin man and a scarecrow placed next to my nursing graduation picture, I am reminded that nurses are, in fact, extraordinary professionals. RNL

—Gina Lypaczewski, RN, CPN, MScA, is a clinical research nurse at Creighton University Osteoporosis Research Center in Omaha, Nebraska, USA.

Photo: Ford Jacobsen of Creighton University’s Creative Media Services