Happy Nurses Week!

It’s that time of year again. A time to celebrate all the nurses out there who work grueling hours and dealing with everything under the sun. They are the backbone of any hospital and without them, well, doctors would have to do everything, and that would be a whole different story!
But what or who do we really celebrate? As a student, I celebrate every time a nurse is kind, not only to their patient, but to the students. To those who help us learn, who are willing to teach us, and help us walk in their shoes and understand what lies along the path we’ve chose. Along those lines, this Nurse’s week, I’d like take this time to thank two particular groups of nurses.

From the managers to the floor nurses, I’d first like to celebrate the nurses I work with. Not only are they kind and caring, but compassionate and know how to have fun on the job. They teach their patients, the families, and they’ve taught me so much in the eight months that I’ve been working there. Knowing that I am a student and hoping to be a peds nurse someday, they’ve taken time out of their day to teach me more about the patients. They answer questions and some even challenge me and help me think through the process to answer the questions myself. And even though I can’t perform the procedures as a nurses aide, when I am helping them out, they talk me through it, making every part of the day a learning experience. For all that they’ve taught me and continue to teach me about nursing, peds, and life in general – here’s to all the nurses on my unit.

And as a student, Nurses week wouldn’t mean anything to me without the instructors who have taught me what I know today.  Graduation is just over a month away, and I can still remember those days of nervousness before clinical. I can’t even walk into a Kaiser without the smells and sounds reminding me of those dreaded mornings before ICU clinicals! But they’ve put up with us through tears and excitement, joy and insanity, and through it all, they have managed to mold us into the nurses we are about to become. Without their determination and understanding of me, I wouldn’t be this close to graduation, and I wouldn’t appreciate nursing the way I do today.

Nurses week is about celebrating this amazing profession that we are a part of. While we appreciate them throughout the year, this is the one time we get to say THANK YOU! for all that you’ve done! So to my unit nurses and all the instructors that led me through the last 2 ½ years of nursing – I LOVE YOU!