REFLECTIONS
Being Human :
A Reflective Experience of What the Image of Nursing Means to Me
By Victoria LoGiudice
Eight weeks . That is how long it took me to realize what the real job of a nurse is like . Assessing your patient and providing medication does not even describe half the job , but only a quarter . The rest involves listening to your patients , being real with them , and most of all , being human . I had the opportunity to take part in an externship at a Long Island Northwell Hospital in the Cardiothoracic Intensive Care Unit and it was the most rewarding eight weeks of my life . This experience changed my perspective of nursing , turned my classroom lectures into real life scenarios , and made me fall head over heels for nursing .
At the beginning of my externship and during many of my clinicals , sometimes I would find myself in a situation where a patient would begin talking to me and I felt that with my lack of experience , I could not and did not know how to respond , or I was too concerned to respond . I had a professor tell me once that it is OKAY to be SILENT . It shows that you are either concerned about what the person next to you has said , you are actively listening , trying to find the right words , or your silence is just louder than any word in that moment . As I got more comfortable with talking to patients during my externship , I encountered an unfamiliar , difficult , but valuable experience . I walked in on a Friday morning and was told I would be taking care of a critically ill patient who was deemed terminal . I said to myself , “ I have never done this before . What should I say ? How do I feel ? Where do I start ?” When I first started taking care of the patient , his wife was crying all day . She was distraught , thinking that it was her fault that she did not bring her husband into the hospital in time after he was found to be having a heart attack . I listened , but I had no words — all I could think about was how I could ease her emotional pain . The worst part was watching the patient ’ s kids and grandkids even more distraught over the situation . I watched my preceptor explain everything she was doing — whether it was making an assessment , drawing blood from his arterial line , hanging a bag of propofol for sedation , suctioning his endotracheal tube , etc . My preceptor also took the time to tell my patient ’ s wife that she did everything she could as a wife and should not feel like it was her fault for what had happened . My preceptor listened and communicated . She was compassionate and used therapeutic touch . At that point I told myself that I was going to do the same no matter the fact that I was a student and not an experienced nurse .
The next day I went to work , and I took care of this patient and family again . I was measuring the patient ’ s output in his foley catheter when his wife began asking me if I was in school and how long I was working at the hospital . I started making small talk with her and asking her about her husband . I did this because I wanted to know the man I would be providing care to for the rest of the day since he was sedated . I also noticed that when my patient ’ s wife would talk about her husband , the conversation calmed her down . That two-minute check for output turned into an hour long conversation . I had originally been on the other side of the bed standing and talking to his wife , but I wanted to be level with her , so I grabbed a chair , sat next to her , and she stopped crying . I was learning about the Russian food she would make and how her husband was in the Vietnam War . I learned that he only liked corn and string beans , and that she would have to make separate vegetables for him during the holidays . She was smiling … FINALLY . I could tell that she was emotionally drained and just needed someone to talk to and make her feel better . She was still
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