Tuesday, April 7, 2009

When you talk to nurses, one of the most common reasons they will give for entering the field is for the "rewards", those invisible little experiences that sometimes have the super charged power of adrenaline and keep us going on days when it seems like the walls of the hospital are about to cave in.

The difficult thing about these satisfying moments is that you never really know when you are going to find one. You see, there are days when you can't figure out how to best help your patient. Days when you can't remember everything you are supposed to do and end up passing off part of your job to the next shift. Days when parents are looking to you to solve the problem, but really you can't fix everything. This is the most incredibly frustrating part - I went into this profession to help out. Terrible things happen in this world and someone needs to be on the other side of them to help people get their lives back. I can do that. Or, rather, I want to do that. Turns out you can't help people in every way they need to be helped. Huh, turns out.