Introduction
Upon reading the book, the first person to cross my mind was the founder of modern nursing, Florence Nightingale. She was a lady who loved nursing and always described it as her calling and would engage in health care activities that promoted and maintained the lives of nurses. From the stories, it is evident that nursing is not a peaceful ride as there are haunting and unclear challenges that are bound to come along in the provision of health care. Some of these stories are actually very touching such as the case where the one experiences the first birth. At times, it is totally, sad especially in the instance of witnessing the first death.
Discussion
One nurse narrates her experience in dealing with the AIDS epidemic. At the time when she was dealing with the Aid patients, the perception around the world was a gay-related immune deficiency syndrome. The sad part is that with the intuitions of being a nurse, she had grown to observe the patients and she would probably detect when a patient would meet death indefinitely. Further still, there was stigma in her community regarding the work she was doing. The experiences made her even stronger as she was able to tell people of the work she was doing, “I work with persons who are dying of AIDS.” Despite there being more stories that really moved me, this made the massive impact to my life.
Looking back at her experiences, it is from a personal perspective that I think that nursing equips an individual with intellectual, emotional, communicational, observational and physical skills.
Going by the content in the stories, I personally hold the opinion that being a nurse develops an individual’s intellectual skills. The nurses who have narrated their stories seem to hold high levels of intelligence, organization and are good at multitasking. Upon reading “I See You” by Tilda Shalof, it persuades me that nursing also incorporates pursuing justice which is inclusive of being able to deal with bullies. Upon that, I agree that nursing does actually make an individual stronger. That is just like the title of the book indicates. It comes out like a joke or a cheering story when she indicates that she holds a patient’s hand, analyzes her twelve-lead electrocardiogram while she monitors arrhythmias. It is for such activities and many other situations that the nurses in all these stories are able to settle that would make me agree that just as this nurse writes, nurses are not just any other angels, they are angels who have very strong wings.
Nurses on a global scale tend to encounter issues that they never expected but they have to manage this situations before they develop to being more complex. This is evident in “Healing Wang Jie’s Bottom”, “Docking in Togo”, “Messiah, and Not Otherwise Specified” and “Listening and Other Lifesaving Measures”. These stories talk of how unexpected challenges and diversity in different cultures will always tend to come up in the life of a nurse. From this point in view, I think therefore that nurses are faced with a challenge of putting on an extreme effort to boost both communication and observational skills. The nurse is expected regardless of the set up to be in a position to communicate with coworkers, patients and doctors in environments that are in most cases fast paced. The nurse is expected to listen to the orders coming from the doctor while taking the most perfect notes.
As most of this stories have indicated, being a nurse requires one to be in a position to spot anything that is out of the ordinary. These are critical observational skills. A nurse would be regarded incompetent by the failure of noticing strange behavior, wounds or anything that seems wrong. There will be may be minimal praise when a nurse but criticism for a simple error would come out so strongly.
References
Gutkind, L. (2013). I wasn't strong like this when I started out: true stories of becoming a nurse. Pittsburgh, Pa..: InFact Books.
