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Dear Nursing (A Love Letter)
Dear Nursing, Why you gotta be like this? I kid. I love you. But you are hard and you make me crazy. I have tried in earnest to quit you because I thought that is what was best. I genuinely believe that God asked me to lay you down and walk away. I prayed and prayed that He would let me take you back because surely we are meant to be together. But sadly, thats not the case. Don’t get me wrong. I have a job. Two new jobs, in fact. In nursing! I’m going to be working shifts and learning new skills and walking with people through their health…
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I’m Quitting Nursing.
Lately I’ve been really focused on purpose. How does what we do here on earth work towards God’s kingdom? How am I going to spend these short days that I have here, pursuing God’s glory? In this search, I started reading the book Made for This by Jennie Allen. One of the things Allen talks about is laying everything before the Lord, and being willing to follow Him anywhere. I felt so confident that I had done this. Over and over again I offered prayers of thanksgiving and devotion where I would say “I will go wherever you lead me Lord, everything I have is yours” and then in the…
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Nursing and The Name III: Gossip
Here is the thing about nursing: I recently called it a beautiful disaster of a career. It was just something that came to me, but the more I think about it, the more I believe it to be true. Nurses can get really bogged down with the day to day. From working shifts, to bullying, to mental health issues, there is no shortage of challenges that nurses face just to come to work, let alone deal with the complex health needs of their patients. But some of the big problems that come up aren’t the result of the work, but of human brokenness. Man, can you see that brokenness in…
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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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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,…
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Is Nursing Sexist?
Today is International Women’s Day. It has got me thinking a lot about the profession of nursing and how it has impacted women for hundreds of years. Historically, nursing was one of the few careers that women could actively pursue, generally giving it up when they married and had children. But it is impossible to deny that because women are the most represented in nursing, this profession stands in a unique space where women have had a voice in influencing the health care field for hundred of years. But does that mean that we have gained equality? And what does “equality” look like when the vast majority of nurses are…
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The Nervous Nurse: Anxiety and the Clinical Environment
I remember being in my third year of Nursing School and wanting nothing more than to puke (and then take a nap). I was in a peds medicine rotation and clinical was awful. I had a brutal instructor who had a big chip on her shoulder about not having a degree but educating those of us who were working towards one. I remember being so terrified of making a mistake that I was pretty much guaranteed I would. I was an A-student and always had been. But then this rotation. My instructor threatened to put me on what my university called a “learning contract” which is basically the last ditch…
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You’ve Got This.
As soon as I decided to become a nurse I was all in. It came out of nowhere. I had just finished a four year undergraduate degree majoring in Political Science with a minor in Art History. I was a musician. I was one of those “creative types”. When I told my sister I was going to go into nursing she laughed out loud. A little too ‘out loud’ if you ask me. See, I was no good at things like “science” or “math” or “not being terrified of blood”. But after graduation from my first degree I was totally lost. I didn’t know what I wanted for my future or where…
