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Nursing and The Name II: Nursing in the Darkness
I’m sure you’ve felt it, too. That darkness that seems to hover over a building, a unit, a room, a bed. It lingers in the air, choking out all the goodness that could be seen. Sometimes it is obvious and you feel it the second you walk in. Other times it is subtle and you don’t know you’re in it until it is sticking to your skin, floating around in your lungs. As Christians, we have the words to describe it, but I am sure that every nurse has experienced it. Hopelessness. Pain. Brokenness. It can just sit there waiting for us to fall victim to it too. There is…
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Nursing and the Name I: Nurse as Healer
I am so excited to be starting this series ‘Nursing and the Name’ with all of you. I have to say, I am overwhelmed by the support I have received since I announced that I was going to be writing the series and I so hope that it will be a blessing to you. I have been spending time in prayer, asking the Lord to reveal to me what it is that he wants me to say. I pray that you know through these words that the Lord God Almighty is just that — Almighty. He is the King of this world and He is the King of your work.…
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Nursing and the Name: Blog Series Coming Soon!
Friends, I’ve been having a hard time sitting down and writing lately. I feel like I haven’t had much direction with my posts and started to wonder why I was bothering to write disjointed ramblings on issues I thought relevant for Christian Nurses. As I do, I took it to the big guy. I asked the Lord to reveal to me what it is He wants me to write about and that is when this blog series came to mind. Nursing and the Name is all about how we nurse in the secular world. The vast majority of us will not work at faith based institutions where we are allowed…
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A Letter to Christian Second Wives
Dear Friends, I have a confession. I have a secret. A secret so well hidden that I literally forget about it …constantly: I am a second wife. My husband was 21 years old when he married his first wife. This isn’t my story to tell, apart from saying that both his priest and my pastor saw that the dissolution of the marriage was biblically justified, and so I won’t get into the details. Plus, this isn’t about him, this is about us. You and me. I met my husband shortly after his marriage ended and things got serious pretty quickly. It became clear that, despite obvious complications, we could not live without…
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Exchanging Busyness for Holiness
I’ve had a bad week. One of those weeks where you seem to be so bad at absolutely everything you do that you wonder why God called you to get out of bed in the mornings. Oh right, because I have three little humans that I have to keep alive. These days I am a lot more focused on mommy-hood than nursing as I’m on mat leave from my casual position. And yet I am so much more busy now than I was when I was working. Moving from 2 kids to 3 definitely plays a big role in it my busyness, but I have also taken on so many other…
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Competition and the Lie of the Finite
“The atmosphere of competition is overwhelming,” a friend recently said when we were talking about her professional situation. Mix that with having several friends over the past few weeks tell me that they felt as though they were in direct competition with other nurses for promotions or job opportunities and we seem to have a problem here. Where are we left, as nurses, when competition sneaks into our profession? I’m not immune to these feelings of intense competition. There have been lots of times when I felt less than or left out when someone else has gotten a job I wanted, or started a masters program, or been recognized within…
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Running a race against myself (and I’m losing)
Friends, I feel like I am running a race that I am doomed to lose. Do you ever feel this way? Like you are running, you feel like you are hitting your stride and then all of a sudden, you notice that the scenery isn’t changing, and you’re not actually moving forward. You’re stuck. And heaven forbid you look down, because then, BAM, you fall flat on your face. This is how I have been feeling about this blog. For a while now, I have had the feeling that the Lord is calling me to go into ministry, but I am scared. S-C-A-R-E-D. I have a career that I, well, I…
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Pediatric Ear Infections (or, A Legitimate Reason Your Child is not Listening to You)
Ok, so maybe that isn’t totally true. My title would imply that hearing loss is an innate aspect of Ostitis Media (aka ye olde ear infection). The truth is that hearing loss is far more of a concern with chronic ear infections, than acute. Ear infections are super common among young children and, for the most part, are not something to lose sleep over. Make sure that you instruct parents and guardians to follow up with their pediatrician to obtain all necessary orders. Here are some tips and tricks for assessing and caring for a pediatric client with ostitis media. So, what’s up? Ostitis media is an inflammation of…
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Nursing vs. Medicine (and why we should stop comparing them)
Did you see what I did there? This has to be an age old debate: should I be a doctor or a nurse? I would like to put this discussion to rest, and not because I think there is an answer, but because I don’t think there can be a comparison. Note: there will be no shade thrown at physicians in this post. While, yes, some of them can be grumpy when you call them at 0200h for a sedative order, for the most part, they’re alright. Nursing is not a runner-up prize We’ve all been there. We went to school or worked with someone who became a nurse because…
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When Work is Your Life: How to Live in Balance as a Nurse
It is so easy to get involved in work outside of work hours. Whether it is because our closest friends also happen to be our coworkers or former classmates, or because there is always an onslaught of family and friends with health questions (“is this normal?” “should that be growing there?”) nurses are rarely truly off the clock. Because of this, we are at constant risk of throwing off our work-life balance. So how do we cope and come up with strategies on how to keep our personal and professional lives in check? Well wouldn’t you know it, I have a blog post about that! Know your limits Ok,…
