“A Nurse’s New Year’s Resolution” – Did you read it?

New Year’s resolutions are hard…hard to choose and even harder to see through. Here, one nurse puts her finger on a resolution for the new year that she’s confident she can keep. Why? Because success rests on two qualities every nurse has, and in abundance: strength and compassion.

If I close my eyes, I can picture every single bad thing I’ve ever seen as a nurse. These images project on the back on my closed eyelids, flashing fast and fervently, fleeting so quickly they’re easy to dismiss and forget about. But I can see them all so clearly. Every single time I was too afraid to question another provider plays over and over in my mind, in an endless loop. These thoughts are compounded by every event I’ve witnessed where everyone’s honest, hard work did not result in the outcome we all fought so hard for. I don’t want my patient’s fate to be determined by what provider they chose or what nurse they happened to get or what hospital they showed up at. I want healthcare providers to collaborate with each other and I want us to engage our patients. I want our patients to be more educated on every single process that affects them. I want patients to know their rights. I want our patients to be nice to us, and I want us to be nice to them. I want our patients to demand better care and better service. I want us to demand better everything. I want every single healthcare provider to step back and remember that the people in front of us are changed by the care we give them…and I want that change to be a good one.

I don’t know if I can do all of this, or for how long, but I’m going to try. Because that’s what we do as nurses—we try to be better than we were the day before. And my New Year’s resolution is this…even when I don’t think my efforts are making any kind of difference, even when I don’t think anyone notices anything I do, even when I question whether or not I want to keep doing this, I’m going to refuse to waver.

 

Want to continue reading? Head on over to The Huffington Post to check out the full piece, and be sure to tell us about your own resolution in the comments section below!