Learning your lessons and accepting your gifts

After practicing nursing for 32 years, I would like to consider myself an expert. Notice, I said I would like to. The truth of the matter is no one who goes into nursing ever becomes an expert. As a "seasoned" nurse, I strive to learn something new every day I go to work. My joke is that if I do, I can go home. That doesn't always hold true. Many times I make my discovery and have my learning moment at 9 a.m., which does not allow me to pick up my things and scoot.

When, as a nurse, you think you know it all, you probably need to go home and do some soul searching. Each day I go to work, I find lessons and challenges that make me learn. It may be something clinical or maybe a lesson on the kindness of my fellow employees. It may be enlightenment about personalities. It also may be a harsh lesson that hurts, and those are much harder to recognize as learning opportunities. However, these lessons are sometimes the most valuable and we should be as thankful for those as we are the more tasteful lessons. I'm still working on that one.

Depending on your belief system, you may be able to justify all of these learning opportunities as gifts from God. I have found over my many years of nursing that these "gifts" have forged my pathway in nursing. Your path may encounter one turn or fork in the road, a moment where a decision needs to be made, a simple opportunity, a chance to work with someone who is the best nursing advocate you can meet. But, what if your path is taking time, maybe two minutes, to make a difference in a patient's, family's, co-worker's or stranger's life? What if that is your "gift" at the time?  Should we not take advantage of that lesson? I have used and heard, throughout my career, the words, "I am just too busy," too many times. By using those words, you are setting yourself up to miss one of these valuable nursing opportunities and a lesson. You are rejecting a gift, which we all know is very tacky.

I remember words of a song from years ago, "What if God were one of us?" What if he were the patient who you just didn't have time for, or the family who needs one minute of your time to understand home medications? Or a co-worker that was up all night with her kids? And what if he was the cafeteria worker whose name you never took the time to learn? What about higher level management? Are they immune to needing pats on the back, reassurance, congratulations, sympathy? What if he were one of them?

There are lessons to learn wherever you go and in whatever you do. Nursing is certainly one of the most respected occupations in America. What an opportunity we have to be the ambassadors to change health care and make it the best it has ever been by accepting our "gifts" and teaching them to others. Gifts and lessons sometimes come in funny, unusual, unexpected packages. We should never put ourselves in a position to miss a lesson, a gift or an opportunity to be a better nurse.

I think I will go to work tomorrow and learn something be thankful for my gifts.

Diana Poorman, RN, works in Cardiology Services at Menorah Medical Center. She dedicates the column to her late mother, Mary Jo Jones.

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