According to a patient in the hospital, these are the top 10 things patients should know about nurses. I thought that this did a good job of summarizing what nurses do at the hospital from the patient’s point of view.
1. You have been placed in the hospital for nursing care.
2. The provider of that care is an educated individual who unselfishly dedicates themselves to your health and well-being. And even though you may not like being told what things are good for you and what are not, the nurse telling you does so to give you a chance to redeem your health and well-being.
3. That provider is proud to be a nurse.
4. That nurse does more than you know. She plans your care around your medical condition, emotional state, abilities to do for yourself (sorry, [nurse], I think you said “self care” in your rant), that nurse provides support to you and your family, she/he is the link between you and the doctor, [and] the everything in the facility.
5. That nurse does your bedside care, she knows what medicine you need when, and how to give it. She knows what all the tubes and stuff are and what they are used for and what to look at them for.
6. That nurse can hang an IV or hold your hand and reassure you.
7. That nurse watches over you and reads monitors and knows when [you’re] sleeping and when [you’re] awake and pulls strings to get you that cup of tea at 3 a.m.
8. That nurse is your lifeline, she can call a whole team of professionals together with her calm voice and make them work their [butts] off for your life with the flash of her/his eyes.
9. That nurse will wish you luck and give you all the instructions you need when you leave her competent care even if you were the biggest pain in the ass she ever met.
10. The nurse is why you are in the hospital and why you will go onward, be it home, perpetual care, or the morgue, she will insure that you do so with your dignity and rights intact. Why? Because it is what a nurse does.