Medical Surgical Nursing

Today was my last assigned day to the Medical-Surgical floor for this semester. My remaining days will be in the Operating Room, PACU, Same Day Surgery and Teaching Learning. I am grateful Med- Surg is over. I have learned a great deal, and along with all those things, I have learned that Med-Surg nursing is not my first choice position as a nurse. So many of my patients' conditions were direct results of poor lifestyle choices and mismanagement of illnesses. Empathy comes easily for me, but not as easily with those whose choices are beyond my comprehension when the consequences for those choices are so dreadful. Many if not most of patients seemed depressed and hopeless.

I need to grow in this area--to treat with love and kindness and a non-judgemental attitude every patient who crosses my path: The alcoholic with kidney and liver failure who is still drinking, the neglectful mother whose children who have been taken away from her by the state and is now having another baby, the antisocial patient who has no friends and no support system, and the angry disabled man dependant on narcotics with the intimidated and shrinking girlfriend.

"If there is any great secret of success in life, it lies in the ability to put yourself in the other person’s place and to see things from his point of view – as well as your own". --Henry Ford