Being a nurse is crazy!

Why is being a nurse crazy?

I first wrote this piece for a speech through Toastmasters International. I was driving yesterday when the thought to post it crossed my mind. Here are some thoughts to why being a nurse is crazy and how I wouldn't have it any other way.

Nursing is one of those jobs that is difficult to describe.

If you ask a non-nurse what a nurse does you may get a response such as...”they care for sick people” or “they pass me my medications.” You could get a response like “a nurse saved my life” or “a nurse gave the best care to my pre-mature baby” or “a nurse gave the best care to my dying mother.”

While these are all true, nursing means so much more. There is the good, bad, ugly, and psychotic when it comes to being a nurse. I’m going to tell you a few ways of how being like a nurse is like being a psych patient or crazy.

The DSM IV is the 4^th edition manual published by the American Psychological Association listing all currently recognized mental health disorders. In this manual there are a few diagnoses for nurses.

A diagnosis of Depersonalization Disorder #300.6 in the DSM IV. This diagnosis is characterized as a mental disorder with common symptoms such as feeling disconnected from one’s own thoughts or emotions, disconnected from reality, as if one is dreaming or having an out of body experience. Nurses feel like this quite often, mostly while working in a hospital or during an emergency. A time I felt this way was while performing CPR on an 88 year old in the back of a life flight helicopter. I’m taking turns with the flight nurse between squeezing the ambu bag providing breaths and giving chest compressions at a rate of 100 per minute. It was very clear to me that my trained instincts took over as I felt like I was having an out of body experience. My heart and emotions were detached from my body-the only focus was saving that little 88 yo woman who was someone’s grandmother.

Another diagnosis is Obsessive-Compulsive Personality Disorder #301.4 in the DSM IV characterized by a pervasive pattern of pre-occupation with orderliness, perfectionism, mental and interpersonal control and a need for power over one’s environment.

Oh now why would a nurse be considered as having OCPD? Well here is one example…a nurse has 8 patients that she or he is responsible for during a shift. All 8 of them have medications due around 9am. We are trained to be OCD about medications…mostly just to keep from killing someone by giving them the wrong medication. No big deal, right?!

Here is your nurse meticulously trying to get the medications ready for the 8 patients and in the middle of this meticulous counting, 3 of the 8 patients are calling simultaneously because they need their nurse. One needs to go to the bathroom, One needs pain medication, and the other one dropped their TV remote on the floor. Now the nurse has to start all over with those medications. Oh the tragedy when she is interrupted again…the patient is then met with the response…”you are just going to have to wait!”

Please forgive your nurse...she is only suffering from OCPD so she doesn’t want to harm you or anyone else.

Another diagnosis is Dissociative Identity Disorder, previously known as Multiple Personality Disorder, #300.14 in the DSM IV characterized as having at least two distinct and relatively enduring identities alternatively controlling a person’s behavior.

Nurses have multiple personalities so we can effectively deal with all of our patients. For example, in room one the patient is dying and very close to death. The emotional environment is somber.

Next door the patient just received a knee replacement. He walked for the first time since surgery and met his daily goal! YAY!!

The patient at the end of the hall just had a bowel movement and I need to get a sample of that poop! Oh joy!!!

A quote off the internet that circulated around nurses week…author unknown.

“Somewhere right now, a NURSE is getting yelled at for being late with pain meds, while holding her bladder because she doesn’t have time to pee, starving because she missed her break, being pooped/peed/bled on, and is missing her family while taking care of yours. NURSES all over the world are saving lives.”

All of this because we care!

So be mindlful of your nurse…because you are dealing with someone who cares.

It takes a strong person to be a nurse and even though we are sometimes psychotic or act like a psych patient we are only in this for you. Yeah we are crazy and we did this on purpose so...is that too a psych diagnosis in itself?

William Osler once said…”the trained nurse has become one of the great blessings of humanity, taking a place beside the physician and the priest”

Crazy huh?! Thank you. 

NurseNicelyRN

"Love worketh no ill to his neighbor: therefore love is the fulfilling of the law." ~Romans 13:10 KJV

Please do not misinterpret this posting with any true diagnosis from the DSM IV. Nor should you believe that I am making light of any person or persons with any of these diagnoses as I am passionate about the care of ALL illness whether mental or physical.