Nurses Tell the Best Dinnertime Stories

When my boys, Logan, 5, and Ridley, 3, sit down for dinner, my husband and I always ask, "What did you do today" and "What was your favorite part of the day?’  Now, you can imagine what responses we get—colored, played outside, ate lunch, played with my friends—all the usual responses of kids.  Then, it is their turn to ask my husband and me what we did.  My husband is in logistics, so he shares dramatic stories of shipping office furniture around the globe!  Me…I get to share stories about "just being a nurse."

My current role is not in direct patient care, but facilitating nurses' professional development.  My exciting dinner stories revolve around the work those nurses do and how I help them share their experiences.  One night, I told them how nurses in the emergency room are keeping patients safer by using barcode scanning, just like the grocery store, when they give people their medicine.  Another night, I talked about a group of nurses who decided that patients and families should be more involved in their care and decided to give a change-of-shift report right at the patient’s bedside.  And just this week I got to tell them that nurses in my hospital helped the Philly Phanatic when he got hurt at the IronPigs game!!  I definitely had the best dinnertime story that night!

The highlight for me during our dinner routine is seeing my boys’ faces light up when I tell stories about what nurses do.  I can see their excitement for my profession and see how "cool" they think mom is because I’m a nurse.  This same thing goes for my adorable niece, Zoe Jane.  Recently, she got a boo-boo and Aunt Nurse Niki was there with antiseptic spray, a bandage and love to make it all better.  She told me that I was the best nurse ever and that she was going to be a nurse, just like me, when she grows up.  To see the excitement in her eyes about nursing is a great feeling and to know that I put it there is humbling.

It is so easy to only focus on the bad things that happen in the world of healthcare today.  We are all human—even doctors and nurses—and we can all make mistakes.  It is costly to make a mistake in healthcare because someone could die, yet we wake up every morning to go take care of others and do our job to the best of our ability.  Why? We do it because we care and chose to work in a profession that serves others, even when it gets hard.  And, oh yeah, so we have the best dinnertime story to share, of course!