10 Things Patients Do not Know About Nurses

10 Things Patient Don’t Know about Nurses

1. I am here to make you as comfortable as I can, not to knock you out/keep you out with pain meds.
2. That we worry about you, think about you, and care about you long after we clock out. We continue thinking about you even when we are at home.
3. Our patients come before ourselves, our family, friends or social life. And sometimes… our own health.
4. Although we do care about you and want to do anything we can for you, we do need at least a short lunch break to give us more energy to get through the day and to give our brains a short break from constantly thinking.
5. That Nursing is a way of life and it comes from our hearts- not because it is a great way to make $$!!! And yes- we DO cry…
6. Thank you ever once in a while!!! We could use some positive attitudes and a genuine thank you can go a long way.
7. That we have feelings too and what happens at work, don’t always stay at work! Just because we may not show our emotions such as sadness at the time of a tragedy doesn’t mean we don’t cry our eyes out when we leave! We were taught that we have to separate ourselves from emotions just so we can serve you.  And yes, that includes patients being rude to us!
8. That there are many of us who debate whether to continue nursing daily, disheartened by administrative politics and poor behavior on the part of MDs and patients ! However we are STILL there in your time of need!
9. We are not maids, slaves or personal messengers. We are highly educated professionals with a heart. We are nurses, AND MAY SEEM LIKE WE ARE engineers, social workers, advocates, listeners, translators, food finders at 3am. We work short staffed, poorly stocked…and at the end of the day its always the nurses fault.
10. We are the ones at your side 24/7, not the doctors. So don’t hold back information from us that you think we don’t need to know!