Confessions of an Emergency Room Nurse

Last night while at work, sitting down at yet another computer, clicking through yet a million more necessary boxes and forms on yet another patient’s chart who would be one of many I’d see that night, I looked to the bottom right-hand corner of the computer screen to check the date.

August 1, 2017.

I sat there for a bit, the chaos of the emergency room surrounding me, the demands for labs and medications written out on my to-do list in front of me, my stress level that always tends to grow as the night progresses breathing down my neck.

It was my official one-year mark of being a nurse.

At first I chuckled to myself. There was a man screaming for a sandwich down the hall, drunk patients lining the wall across from me wrapped in their own little cocoons of blankets, orange juices and sandwiches sitting at the foot of the bed for when they woke up, and a trauma being called in by a paramedic unit off-site.

Honestly, it was just another typical Monday night. But in thinking about it, if I had known how difficult and trying this job would be before I took it, I doubt I would’ve ever dared to take the leap.

And yet, here we are. And I couldn’t be more thankful for what a year it’s been.

The thing I’ve learned about nursing is that you never really stop learning. Whether it’s about people, medical procedures, becoming fluent in drunken lingo, or how to control your emotions in any wide range of situations, everyday you’re confronted with something new - something testing your limit. And while I like to think it’s gotten easier, I’ve accepted that there won’t ever really be a “status quo” with this job. There’s never an ordinary day as an emergency room nurse.

I’ve learned that you can never fully anticipate what it is that life will to throw at you, especially in our department where we never know what type of patient will walk through the doors next. From patients convinced their common cold is an emergency to patients arriving with active chest compressions being performed, we run the gamut in those we care for.

But this also holds true for some of our patients, their lives changing in an instant. Where one moment they’re living their normal life in the outside world to suddenly become a patient, sometimes fighting for their life.

I’ve learned that compassion really does go a long way in making a person’s day. How a glass of water, a few graham crackers, and a minute or two where you stop to talk can mean the world to an individual in a foreign environment where outcomes often aren’t clear and where anxiety and fear run rampant.

I’ve learned that you have to have a tough shell. While nurses may serve in the business of helping others where you would think compassion and thankfulness are plentiful, instead we’re often cursed at by patients, berated for situations outside our control, stretched beyond our limit, and overworked.

We go without thanks, without a pee-break, and god forbid without our thirty-minute lunch break.

And yet we persist.

Sitting here thinking how quickly one year can fly by, I can’t help but think of the hundreds, if not thousands of patients I’ve seen in the past year alone and how much each and every one of them have taught me.

I think about how much I’ve learned about myself, the confidence I’ve gained in my skillset, my determination to see past the bad days I have on the job, the clinical knowledge I’ve developed surrounding diseases I’ve never heard of.

And if there’s anything that’s proven to be the greatest lesson for me in this past year, it’s that humanity and our lives within it are fragile.

That a little bit of kindness goes further than you’d imagine.

And that - in the business of helping others - you can never truly measure the impact you can have on those who surround you.

And while it’s not always easy, I consider myself lucky to be an emergency nurse. With all the challenges, hardships, and frustrations that may come with it, I know I wouldn’t have it any other way.

So cheers.

May it be to many more.