Unsung Heroes

I have some less than friendly things to say about part of our hospital experience, but instead of that rant, I’d like to throw some praise around. Overall, the nursing staff here was great. It reminded me how underappreciated that job is but how vital. It requires a special type of person to do the job.

Having to deal with sick, sore. annoyed, grumpy people during a 12hr shift. while cleaning up every fluid the human body can produce (and some it shouldn’t produce) is far from the most glamorous job. Yet, all of the nurses we had were friendly and professional. Most were empathetic and compassionate, but even the few that couldn’t completely hide their general apathy towards us or their job, were still friendly.

I can’t imagine having the kind of patience to deal with laboring women every work day, with all the complications, stresses and issues that go along with that. Doctors are always thought of in terms of delivering a baby, but we only saw the OB occasionally, and that was more often than most. So nurses do the hard part of labor, docs just show up for the end. Unless there’s a problem, like say a c-section. Barring that, it would be fairer to say the nurse delivers the baby than the doctor.

It’s the long painful, stress filled part that is the hard task for a caregiver. Cutting someone open, while technically more challenging, is far less emotionally difficult (that sentence would be awesome out of context).

Nurses are like teachers, a very important role in society that is under appreciated.