they’re
really
doing there; it’s more of a “Limbo Lounge”), then enter the heavy steel doors and, voilà, the Medical-Surgical ICU , my home away from home.
But tonight I’ve chosen a different route: I’m taking the stairs. I have to see if I can do it.
Maybe I don’t need this surgery after all …
One … two … three steps …
A crushing tightness clamps down on my chest. Stopped in my tracks, crouched down on the bottom step, I try to catch my breath.
Out of the corner of my eye, I see inside-out vinyl gloves flung on the stairwell floor right next to what looks like a dried pool of blood but I’m hoping is an old coffee spill.
This place is disgusting! I’ve seen cleaners swish the filth around in buckets of grey water, push it from one side of the room to the other … splattered cardiac electrodes, the stinky, soggy blood pressure cuff’s …
I take the elevator to the tenth floor.
Progress is probably being made in the way nurses work on the wards these days, but years ago, when I was starting out as a new nurse, I was on a general medicine floor and it felt like a brutal reality shock after my protected life as a student. My initiation period was rough. The staff were unfriendly and the workload gruelling. I was constantly thrown into situations I couldn’t cope with. There was no one to ask questions about things I was unsure of. I was always running, trying to catch up, constantly frustrated and plagued with the feeling that I was supposed to be somewhere other than where I was, doing something other than what I was doing. It was lonely because there was no teamwork whatsoever, nor any of that “multidisciplinary collaboration” that they promised in school. It was the doctors’ world, and nurses were either subordinate, peripheral, or invisible altogether. We were expected to be quiet and just follow orders. Empowered by my enlightened, progressive university education, I had a different vision of how things should be. Though I believed I had more to contribute, I didn’t have the courage to speak up and be a maverick. I had no choice but to stick it out because I needed the salary. It was either “sink or swim,” so I dogpaddled frantically for almost two years.
Then, when an opportunity came up to study critical care, I didn’t know what the ICU entailed, or if I had the right stuff to take it on, or even if the working conditions would be any better, but I took a chance. I did and they were.
I found a lot to love in the ICU . Here, my ideals about nursing could actually be put into practice; the conditions were in place to actually provide patient-centred care – it wasn’t a distant dream. Here, my contribution was respected and I could work as equals with the other members of the care team. In fact, our slogan is “Every voice is valued.” In the ICU , teamwork is essential because you have to depend on one another; you couldn’t do this work alone and you have to be able to count on knowing that whatever comes through the door, we’ll deal with it together.
For me personally, the best part was my good fortune to fall in with a group of nurses dubbed “Laura’s Line.” They soon became mentors and colleagues and now, even though most of them have moved on from the ICU , remain close friends.
For almost thirty years, the ICU has been my home. I know the place, its routines, and all the players. Even so, I try never to lose sight of how unsettling, disturbing – at times terrifying – it is to patients and families, especially when encountering it for the first time. When I bring visitors to their loved one, they stare in disbelief, hardly recognizing the person, unconscious, entangled in wires and tubes, attached to hulking, noisy machines. One mother insisted I’d brought her to the wrong patient. “This is not my daughter.” She stared at the pale, puffy stranger in the bed. I stood at her side while she absorbed the fact that it was.
The ICU is
really
doing there; it’s more of a “Limbo Lounge”), then enter the heavy steel doors and, voilà, the Medical-Surgical ICU , my home away from home.
But tonight I’ve chosen a different route: I’m taking the stairs. I have to see if I can do it.
Maybe I don’t need this surgery after all …
One … two … three steps …
A crushing tightness clamps down on my chest. Stopped in my tracks, crouched down on the bottom step, I try to catch my breath.
Out of the corner of my eye, I see inside-out vinyl gloves flung on the stairwell floor right next to what looks like a dried pool of blood but I’m hoping is an old coffee spill.
This place is disgusting! I’ve seen cleaners swish the filth around in buckets of grey water, push it from one side of the room to the other … splattered cardiac electrodes, the stinky, soggy blood pressure cuff’s …
I take the elevator to the tenth floor.
Progress is probably being made in the way nurses work on the wards these days, but years ago, when I was starting out as a new nurse, I was on a general medicine floor and it felt like a brutal reality shock after my protected life as a student. My initiation period was rough. The staff were unfriendly and the workload gruelling. I was constantly thrown into situations I couldn’t cope with. There was no one to ask questions about things I was unsure of. I was always running, trying to catch up, constantly frustrated and plagued with the feeling that I was supposed to be somewhere other than where I was, doing something other than what I was doing. It was lonely because there was no teamwork whatsoever, nor any of that “multidisciplinary collaboration” that they promised in school. It was the doctors’ world, and nurses were either subordinate, peripheral, or invisible altogether. We were expected to be quiet and just follow orders. Empowered by my enlightened, progressive university education, I had a different vision of how things should be. Though I believed I had more to contribute, I didn’t have the courage to speak up and be a maverick. I had no choice but to stick it out because I needed the salary. It was either “sink or swim,” so I dogpaddled frantically for almost two years.
Then, when an opportunity came up to study critical care, I didn’t know what the ICU entailed, or if I had the right stuff to take it on, or even if the working conditions would be any better, but I took a chance. I did and they were.
I found a lot to love in the ICU . Here, my ideals about nursing could actually be put into practice; the conditions were in place to actually provide patient-centred care – it wasn’t a distant dream. Here, my contribution was respected and I could work as equals with the other members of the care team. In fact, our slogan is “Every voice is valued.” In the ICU , teamwork is essential because you have to depend on one another; you couldn’t do this work alone and you have to be able to count on knowing that whatever comes through the door, we’ll deal with it together.
For me personally, the best part was my good fortune to fall in with a group of nurses dubbed “Laura’s Line.” They soon became mentors and colleagues and now, even though most of them have moved on from the ICU , remain close friends.
For almost thirty years, the ICU has been my home. I know the place, its routines, and all the players. Even so, I try never to lose sight of how unsettling, disturbing – at times terrifying – it is to patients and families, especially when encountering it for the first time. When I bring visitors to their loved one, they stare in disbelief, hardly recognizing the person, unconscious, entangled in wires and tubes, attached to hulking, noisy machines. One mother insisted I’d brought her to the wrong patient. “This is not my daughter.” She stared at the pale, puffy stranger in the bed. I stood at her side while she absorbed the fact that it was.
The ICU is
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