Rachel Basham is a nurse.
Imagine you are in a bad car accident. You are in and out of consciousness. There are lights and sirens and the smell of gasoline. Everything hurts more than you can bear. Hands pull you from the car and place you on a hard backboard with a rigid cervical collar around your neck. You bump down the road in the back of an ambulance as you start feeling like you …
I’m usually good with words. The last year and a half of being a “front line nurse” has left me struggling to find the words. The frustration, anger, trauma, and sadness have so muddied my mind that I find it hard to sort through all of the complexities and put a name to them.
A patient told me the other day, “I know at least 60 people who have had COVID, …
Nursing has always been my passion. The idea of spending hours at a patient’s bedside, putting in blood, sweat, and tears to save a life. Now that is living! I was made to be a nurse. I’m not afraid of hard work. I have worked 13 consecutive hours without as much as a bathroom break; more often in my career, this is the case than not. I’m not afraid of …
As a new nurse, I was constantly overwhelmed. I had spent four years of my life learning how to become a nurse, and then here I was, being “a nurse” and wondering all the time whether I was even any good at it. My heart was in it. But every moment of every shift, I felt anxious about my understanding of the information presented to me. I remember conversations with …
“Compassion fatigue” is a phrase thrown around easily when talking about the health care professions. It is often spoken in the same breath as “burnout” and “turnover” while discussing the crisis of a diminishing workforce and increasing demand in health care.
The phrase brings to mind the burnt-out nurse who doesn’t have the emotional energy to care anymore. I can see her: deep frown lines, flat facial expression, dimmed eyes.
The light …
I became a nurse at the age of 23. I was pregnant with my first son and dove into nursing headfirst, accepting a job in the pediatric ICU of the hospital where I worked. I still remember the call when I received the job offer. I hung up and jumped up and down, screaming in excitement. I couldn’t believe that I got my dream job, the job that wove my …
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