Having support when you are a nurse is critical to your career. From mentoring in nursing school to preceptoring when starting a new position, an experienced and positive nurse by your side can ensure your professional success. Outside of work, having friends and family that are there for you (even if they do not completely understand the stress of the job) can make a difference on those hard days giving you that much needed mental boost when things become overwhelming. It is a wonderful thing if you can find friends who are nurses outside of work, as they get the job, the stress, and the bizarre hours by which you lead your life. I am fortunate to have several friends who are nurses, not only those I made in nursing school but others I connected with in New Mexico and beyond. Nurse friends provide wonderful sounding boards, offer great perspectives from specialties different from your own, and get that crazy sense of humor you’ve developed over hours spent in not-so-normal situations. I recently had the opportunity to be interviewed by one of these fantastic nurse friends, Keith Carlson. I met Nurse Keith briefly many years ago in Santa Fe and fate kept […]
I recently had the opportunity to run the Big Sur International Marathon. I started to train in January, going to the gym 3-4 times per week for cardio and weight training in addition to my time spent getting my miles in on the road and local trails. I also kept a close watch on my diet, tightening it up as I neared the week of the race. I put in a considerable amount of work to get fit for the race, as this was key to how I was going to perform during the race as well as how fast my recovery would be afterward. As I trained around my work schedule, it struck me how much nursing is like running a marathon, and in honor of Nurse’s Week, I am going to expand a bit on this metaphor. My marathon day started at 3:30 AM, with me prepping my gear that I would need over the next several hours. I will have to admit I had neurotically checked my bag before leaving to fly to California as well as when we arrived – this was due to an unfortunate mistake made last year, in which my running bag was […]
If you had told me ten years ago that I would be a nurse owning my own business, I probably would not have believed you. It is incredible how much can change over ten years (in fact, it is incredible how much can change in 24 hours) and I cannot even fathom where I will be in the next ten years. As a nurse and small business owner, I have learned so much, taking on more roles than I ever thought I could. My role as Chief Nursing Officer involves hiring new staff for Nurses With Heart Home Care – mostly caregivers, who assist our clients with everything from bathing and grooming to errand running and companionship care. Sitting on the other side of the hiring desk is a far cry from sitting in the chair as the interviewee. When we first started Nurses With Heart seven years ago, I was extremely nervous while interviewing potential candidates. I had set questions to ask, including the ridiculous standards of interviewing: What is your biggest weakness? Why did you apply for this job? If you were a tree, what kind of tree would you be? (Well, not really for that last one, […]
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 […]
With two hours of sleep and sitting on a turbulent plane cradling a bad cup of coffee, I started Aspire to be Inspired, by Keith Carlson. About one month prior to being airborne, Keith Carlson had sent me his new book to read. Having enjoyed his first book, Savvy Networking for Nurses, I was looking forward to Nurse Keith’s latest edition. As a disclosure, I became friends with Nurse Keith one year ago, when we met at the National Nurses in Business Conference in Las Vegas. Funnily enough, we are both from Santa Fe, and with a population of only 60,000 people, it took a conference in another state for us to meet. Getting back to the plane, bad coffee, and new book, I was pretty exhausted. The previous day had been a hard one, one where clients were unreceptive to nursing help, families wanted the opposite of what was needed, which was all topped off by rescuing a family member from a bad accident. But this is the day in the life of a nurse, some days are literal car wrecks and you do your best to salvage some peace of mind just knowing you made it through the […]
Nursing is A Work Of Heart (ugh) Cutely Competent Nursing is a work of heart – ugh. I am not one for sickly sweet nursing adages, as my typically sarcastic personality usually appreciates the darker side of medical comedy. However terrible I feel that “nursing is a work of heart” is, it is true – nursing is both about empathy and evidence-based practice, making it an art form that is often hard to quantify its worth. Case in point, what a difference a good sense of smell can make in the medical field. I had always thought that death and the process of dying smelled like a mixture of medical gloves, disposable bed pads, oxygen tubing, sticky liquid medications administered orally in small, delicate syringes, wet wipes, and sweat. Sweat from families, visiting in a time of duress and unsure of what to say, sweat from medical staff, working to keep the individual clean and comfortable, and sweat from the individual, occasionally in pain or short of breath, exhausted and weak. No matter how often the room is aired, the linens changed, or how many bed baths occur, the odor will continue to permeate the room until after the individual […]