Perseverance is something I constantly strive for – I may not be the best or the fastest, but I can keep going, which is why I enjoy running marathons. Perseverance is also something that has been required of me over the past year – as is with many others, 2017 was a difficult year. But, it was also a very productive year, and unfortunately I was not as good at documenting as I had hoped to be.
So despite all of the tumultuousness of 2017, I achieved quite a few things, including building a green house, running a 50k, learning new marketing methods for our home health agency, and attending an awesome conference for nurse entrepreneurs. And while I started the Your Nurse Friday blog in 2016, I neglected blogging due to a variety of reasons – I was not sure of how to get started, I was too busy, I did not think anyone would read it, I was active on other social channels…because there are always a million excuses of why not to do something.
So this year I will persevere again with my Your Nurse Friday blog. To start off this first blog of 2018, I will again define what it means to be Your Nurse Friday, as it has come to my attention that some are unaware of its meaning. I took inspiration for Your Nurse Friday from the phrase “gal Friday”, which according to dictionary.com, is “An efficient and faithful female assistant, as in I’ll have my girl Friday get the papers together.”
The phrase actually originated from a character in Robinson Crusoe and then became a popular phrase in 1940 with the Cary Grant movie, His Girl Friday. A girl Friday is really a “jack of all trades”, one who knows a little something about everything, is excited to learn about new things, and always gets the job done.
I took “gal Friday” and turned it into “Your Nurse Friday”. As a home health nurse, you need to easily adapt on the fly to changing situations. Unlike the hospital, where environments are more standardized, nursing in home care can entail a variety of settings. Dressing changes may occur in a bathroom, in a hotel room, or while sitting at a kitchen table. Sometimes visits are conducted through a screen door, other times in a guest room or in an assisted living facility. Not only am I a home health nurse, I am also passionate about learning about all things nursing, or as local nurse blogger Nurse Keith puts it in his book, Aspire to be Inspired, a “Polymath Nurse”.
So where does perseverance fit in with Your Nurse Friday? Perseverance is key to every aspect of Your Nurse Friday, from striving to execute best practices as a nurse to working to learn something new every day. And this year, I am going to be more persistent about documenting my experiences and the new things I learn as Your Nurse Friday. I recently wrote the New Year’s blog for Nurses With Heart Home Care, which was all about making 2018 your year of “how…” (how will I improve upon myself, how can I help my community, etc.). 2018 will also be my year of “how…” – learning how to do new things, exploring new ideas, and pursuing new experiences. I invite you to join me on my journey as I document it through social media (see the left sidebar for links) and (more importantly!) via my blog!
Thanks as always for reading and allons-y (which is French for let’s go!)!
One of the many things I failed to document in 2017 – building a greenhouse!
