Serving a purpose

To Help. To Fix. To Serve.

Just about any nurse will tell you the reason why they decided to become a nurse is to help people. I have said it on several occasions. It is also the desire of many health care professionals, in particular, novice nurses, to fix a patient's problems. They have cancer, we want to make it go away. They have a shitty family, we want to be their support. They can't afford their treatments, we wish we had the money to pay for them. It is this charitable nature that can make a nurse very successful, but can also lead to what the industry has deemed, "compassion fatigue." AKA: burnout.

I learned this lesson, like most new nurses, the hard way. In my last job, I wanted to help people, sure. But my downfall came when I wanted to "fix" things. Whether it was my patient's problems or the problems within the institution/department I worked in. I thought if I worked hard enough, I could fix it. After operating like this for nearly 3 years, I finally determined that I couldn't help my patient's nor could I fix their problems; I certainly found out I couldn't fix the problems of the institution or my department.

Enter my decision to travel. As I said in my first post, there were several reasons why I decided to land on travel nursing specifically. However, the biggest draw was that I am only working for a particular institution for a short period of time. I'm not going there to "fix" anything. I don't need to help them with their administrative issues, managerial issues, ect. I am going to be an extra set of hands and serve the patients the best I can. I go. I do a job. I leave. Period.

"Helping, fixing, and serving represent three different ways of seeing life. When you help, you see life as weak. When you fix, you see life as broken. When you serve, you see life as whole."~Christina Puchalski

On a totally different note, tonight I came home from work and found a big bag of goodies on my doorstep from my landlord's wife (more about her in a video I'll post later this week!). Pasta, bread, tomatoes, parmesan, onion, garlic, sparkling soda, grapes, and four herb plants. Guess it is Italian tomorrow night! How sweet is she??!