Ransom Stephens's Blog, page 3
May 9, 2019
Celebrate National Nurse’s Week
by thanking the angel nearest you
Photo by Ani Kolleshi on UnsplashOdds are that the first person to look in your eyes was a nurse. The odds are even better that the last person you see will be a nurse. Nurses give us dignity at those times in our lives when we simply cannot afford dignity. Whether by injury or illness, when our internal systems fail, they clean up our messes and somehow find it within themselves to consider it their honor; when our hearts fail to beat, they are the first to get us going again; and when it’s time to call it a life, they guide us warmly to the check out window.
This is National Nurse’s Week; Florence Nightingale was born 190 years ago on May 11. She was a British nurse and statistician who changed the way medicine is practiced by transforming the job from little more than biological janitor to angel of mercy or, in the vernacular: nurse.
Some people believe that angels really exist. They do. They live up the street from you, maybe next door, maybe upstairs. They don’t tend to be quiet people, nor are they easy to identify. Though their wings are as subtle as any metaphor, if we define a “wing” to be something that gives flight, then they couldn’t be more real.
Nurses embody the line between science and society. They’re philosophical role is “patient advocate.” Where a doctor’s primary concern is with repairing the ailment, nurses are concerned with you and your comfort. Doctors are scientists in the same sense that engineers are scientists: they apply a great body of scientific work in pursuit of a goal. Nurses are the conduit from that science to the society of the people who care for you. When your friends and family can’t help you, your nurse can.
The job of a nurse is to maintain your comfort and dignity as the doctor pokes and prods, tests and experiments with different cures. When the doctor makes a mistake, your nurse is the one most likely to catch it, to question it. And when the doctor presumes that healing your body is more important than soothing your soul, your nurse is the one who is aware of the wishes that you made when you were healthy, the one who knows the Decisions you have already made regarding your ultimate dignity and who makes certain that they are carried out.
(You are welcome to republish the text of this article, but not the images, without needing further permission, provided that you attribute the work to its author, Ransom Stephens — whose very favorite person is a nurse.)
