Robbins Alexandra"
The Nurses: A Year of Secrets, Drama, and Miracles with the Heroes of the Hospital"
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читать дальше The Secret Club
"Nursing is among the most important professions in the world.
In no other profession do people float ably among specialties, helping to ease babies into being, escorting men and women gently into death, and heroically resurrecting patients in between. There are few other careers in which people are so devoted to a noble purpose that they work twelve, fourteen, sixteen straight hours without eating, sleeping, or taking breaks and often without commensurate pay simply because they believe in the importance of their job. They are frequently the first responders on the front lines of malady and contagion, risking their own health to improve someone else's. Nursing is more than a career; it is a calling. Nurses are remarkable. Yet contemporary literature largely neglects them.
At 3.5 million strong in the United States and more than 20 million worldwide, nurses are the largest group of healthcare providers. The women who comprise 90 percent of the workforce are a unique sisterhood whose bonds are forged through the most dramatic miracles and traumas as well as the tedious, routine tasks necessary to keep human bodies functioning. Nursing, for brave men and women, is "like a secret club that holds immense emotional joy and fulfillment in spite of shared tragedies," a Michigan nurse practitioner told me. Nurses call the profession a secret club because their experiences are so novel, their jobs so intimate and occasionally horrifying, their combination of compassion and desensitization so peculiar, that they imagine nobody else could understand what it is like to work in their once-white shoes.
Pop culture would have us believe that nurses play a small, trivial role in healthcare; medical television programs tend to show doctors lingering at patients' bedsides while nurses flit and intone "Yes, Doctor" in the background. But this is not the case. As a Minnesota agency nurse said, "We are not just bed-making, drink-serving, poop-wiping, medication-passing assistants. We are much more."
They are, for example, reporters. They discuss and document patient status, serving as the main point of contact for doctors, surgeons, therapists, social workers, and other specialists. They are watchmen, keeping vigil, meticulously monitoring vital signs, deciphering patients' individual trends and patterns, painstakingly double-checking dosages and medications. They are detectives, investigating deviations, asking questions, listening carefully, searching for clues. They are warriors, called to serve at the first sign of outbreak, fighting infection, containing disease. They are gatekeepers, turning staff members away when patients need a break from procedures, a nap, or a moment to digest their circumstances. They are scientists, constantly learning, tackling sociology, psychology, physiology, anatomy, pharmacology, chemistry, microbiology. They are advocates, lobbying physicians for or against procedures, for pain assistance, for a few more minutes of time. They are teachers, educating people about their condition, demonstrating home healthcare to patients and parents: how to suction a tracheostomy, change an airway, inject a medication, breastfeed a newborn. They are the muscle, holding patients down to insert or remove tubes or needles, pushing people to get out of bed following surgery, breaking a sweat when performing CPR, lifting, moving, pushing, forcing, turning. They are confidantes, protectors, communicators, comforters, nurturers; easing fears, offering solace, cradling babies whose parents can't be there, consoling loved ones who feel that all hope is gone. They are multitaskers: supporting, coordinating, and inhabiting all of these roles at once. And they are lionhearted diplomats, helping a patient die with dignity in one room, facilitating a recovery in the next, keeping their composure even when they are shaken to the core. "