As I Wheeled My Cart, I saw Everything
At night the hospital is a completely different place. The halls are dark, empty, devoid of the noisy bustling of the larger day shift staff. Small lights illuminate necessary corners, but the rest of the hospital falls asleep until tomorrow.
Through my experience on modified duty, I was able to experience the hospital in the daylight, in all its busy crazed glory. Because I am used to greeting staff at 0700 sharp when they are pre-caffeinated and half in-bed and half angry at being at the hospital, I assumed that day shifters were perhaps grumpier people. But who we are right when we wake up isnāt really who we really are, as I learned. Ā
I was able to swing my cart all over the hospitalāengineering, the warehouse, the medical office buildings, business office and finance, through the halls of the medical coders and admitting specialist, the large break room of the EVS staff, the walled in nurses station of the locked behavioral units, the teeny tiny bassinets in NICU, the loud banging of the sterilizers in central supplyāeverywhere. I really got to see my hospital and all its illuminated corners.
I think in nursing we forget about all of the other people at the hospital, who also are amazing caregivers. I realized it one Thursday morning when I had been sitting at my flu station since 0530 AM, and couldnāt even abandon my station to pee. Slumped in my chair, a kind woman from the cafeteria noticed my posture and said, āHoney youāve been sitting here for hours,ā and plopped a huge ice water in front of me and then walked away. I had not realized how thirsty I was. I looked up to see her kindly greeting people at the cash register, treating them with a smile no matter how rude or weary they were.
My bell jingled as a strolled through the halls with my cart. I watched nurse managers come out to massage the shoulders of CNAs afraid to get their first flu shot. I met people whose names Iād only seen in emails. I took time to read the framed newspapers that lined the halls with stories of nurse success and community heroes. I saw the tubes crash out of the tube system and clatter noisily on the tiled floor of the pharmacy loud and obnoxious. The pharmacist simply said, āCan you remember to tell the nurses on the floor not to send more than one tube at once?ā Sure I can.
Iāll tell them about how hard every person works in this place. The way admitting clerk gave quarters to a stranger to get a newspaper, the way the volunteers smiled as they led families to the bedside, the way the kitchen staff dances to music when the cafeteria doors close. I wonāt forget the case managers and ultrasound techs five or six at a time who work in offices the size of closets, or the fact that the lab techs, abstractors, directors of who knows what run the halls just as much as we do. Ā
We may feel like we have a monopoly on patient care because we spend the most time at the bedside, but nurses are not the only super heroes of the hospital. Keep that in mind every day you workāday or night.
What a beautiful place my hospital is to the community; both the one outside and inside.
