NUR 601 Week 1 Blog Post 1: Forever Mark
NUR 601 Week 1 Blog Post 1: Forever Mark
Levine theorized that nursing involves a complex and in a way, intimate interaction between nurse and patient. Small moments frequently stand out in patients’ memories of nursing care–for better, or for worse. This is one reason it is so important for nurses to be aware of their behavior at all times. One small, seemingly insignificant moment to the nurse may leave a lasting effect on a patient for the rest of their life. This works in the other direction as well. Nurses may be impacted by patients more than they know.
I know that as a nurse, I am constantly impacted by patients. One recent interaction that stands out to me is an encounter with a patient at the detox and addiction center. I was having difficulties with one patient in particular who seemed unwilling to follow instructions. I am embarrassed to admit that I left the interaction extremely irritated and frustrated. This made me less eager to interact with him throughout the rest of his stay.
On his last day, I sat with him in an exam room. I listened to him speak with the on-call provider. While he was doing this, I was coordinating an emergency appointment at the nearest wound clinic with availability. After multiple phone calls and emails coordinating travel plans and scheduling, he started a conversation with me. He started with, “are you ever NOT happy?”. I was shocked by this question–at first, I did not understand what he was asking. I quickly realized he was referring to the fact that I always maintain an upbeat, positive attitude at work, despite how I may feel internally. Of course sometimes I get upset, angry, or sad. In fact, I had been frustrated and irritated during many of our interactions–it seemed that he was unaware of this, however.
He began telling me about how much he had enjoyed having me as his nurse. He appreciated my non-judgmental attitude, my constant positivity and optimism, my willingness to go above and beyond for him, other patients, and my colleagues. He told me that I had made a huge difference in his stay at our facility, and he was thankful I was around so often.
I was in complete shock to hear him say this. Privately, I had found this patient irritating and difficult to deal with. The last thing I expected was this patient to tell me how much he had enjoyed working with me–especially since I had assumed my irritation must have been evident at least to some degree in our interactions. Instantly, my irritation and frustration evaporated. I was immediately thankful that he had never noticed my negativity. He must have never noticed any change in my behavior, despite my frustrations.
I was proud of myself for the fact that I had not let my negative emotions influence my behavior. But mostly, this patient taught me how rewarding it is to show compassion, patience, and kindness to patients no matter how I may personally feel at any given moment. I will never forget how this patient reminded me that being respectful and kind, even when I am experiencing negative emotions, can make all the difference.
In the end, this patient turned out to be much different than I had initially judged him to be. He reminded me to never trust snap judgements, and to never treat patients differently just because of a bad mood. I will be grateful for him for the rest of my career, and he probably does not even know it.
Important information for writing discussion questions and participation
Welcome to class
Hello class and welcome to the class and I will be your instructor for this course. This is a -week course and requires a lot of time commitment, organization, and a high level of dedication. Please use the class syllabus to guide you through all the assignments required for the course. I have also attached the classroom policies to this announcement to know your expectations for this course. Please review this document carefully and ask me any questions if you do. You could email me at any time or send me a message via the “message” icon in halo if you need to contact me. I check my email regularly, so you should get a response within 24 hours. If you have not heard from me within 24 hours and need to contact me urgently, please send a follow up text to
I strongly encourage that you do not wait until the very last minute to complete your assignments. Your assignments in weeks 4 and 5 require early planning as you would need to present a teaching plan and interview a community health provider. I advise you look at the requirements for these assignments at the beginning of the course and plan accordingly. I have posted the YouTube link that explains all the class assignments in detail. It is required that you watch this 32-minute video as the assignments from week 3 through 5 require that you follow the instructions to the letter to succeed. Failure to complete these assignments according to instructions might lead to a zero. After watching the video, please schedule a one-on-one with me to discuss your topic for your project by the second week of class. Use this link to schedule a 15-minute session. Please, call me at the time of your appointment on my number. Please note that I will NOT call you.
Please, be advised I do NOT accept any assignments by email. If you are having technical issues with uploading an assignment, contact the technical department and inform me of the issue. If you have any issues that would prevent you from getting your assignments to me by the deadline, please inform me to request a possible extension. Note that working fulltime or overtime is no excuse for late assignments. There is a 5%-point deduction for every day your assignment is late. This only applies to approved extensions. Late assignments will not be accepted.
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Plagiarism is highly prohibited. Please ensure you are citing your sources correctly using APA 7th edition. All assignments including discussion posts should be formatted in APA with the appropriate spacing, font, margin, and indents. Any papers not well formatted would be returned back to you, hence, I advise you review APA formatting style. I have attached a sample paper in APA format and will also post sample discussion responses in subsequent announcements.
Your initial discussion post should be a minimum of 200 words and response posts should be a minimum of 150 words. Be advised that I grade based on quality and not necessarily the number of words you post. A minimum of TWO references should be used for your initial post. For your response post, you do not need references as personal experiences would count as response posts. If you however cite anything from the literature for your response post, it is required that you cite your reference. You should include a minimum of THREE references for papers in this course. Please note that references should be no more than 5 years old except recommended as a resource for the class. Furthermore, for each discussion board question, you need ONE initial substantive response and TWO substantive responses to either your classmates or your instructor for a total of THREE responses. There are TWO discussion questions each week, hence, you need a total minimum of SIX discussion posts for each week. I usually post a discussion question each week. You could also respond to these as it would count towards your required SIX discussion posts for the week.
I understand this is a lot of information to cover in 5 weeks, however, the Bible says in Philippians 4:13 that we can do all things through Christ that strengthens us. Even in times like this, we are encouraged by God’s word that we have that ability in us to succeed with His strength. I pray that each and every one of you receives strength for this course and life generally as we navigate through this pandemic that is shaking our world today. Relax and enjoy the course!
Hi Class,
Please read through the following information on writing a Discussion question response and participation posts.
Contact me if you have any questions.
Important information on Writing a Discussion Question
- Your response needs to be a minimum of 150 words (not including your list of references)
- There needs to be at least TWO references with ONE being a peer reviewed professional journal article.
- Include in-text citations in your response
- Do not include quotes—instead summarize and paraphrase the information
- Follow APA-7th edition
- Points will be deducted if the above is not followed
Participation –replies to your classmates or instructor
- A minimum of 6 responses per week, on at least 3 days of the week.
- Each response needs at least ONE reference with citations—best if it is a peer reviewed journal article
- Each response needs to be at least 75 words in length (does not include your list of references)
- Responses need to be substantive by bringing information to the discussion or further enhance the discussion. Responses of “I agree” or “great post” does not count for the word count.
- Follow APA 7th edition
- Points will be deducted if the above is not followed
- Remember to use and follow APA-7th edition for all weekly assignments, discussion questions, and participation points.
- Here are some helpful links
- The is a great resource
Value: Complete at 100/Incomplete at 0
Due: Day 7
Gradebook Category: Blogs
Instructions
According to Levine, nursing is a human interaction. The nurse enters into a partnership of human experience where sharing moments in time—some trivial, some dramatic—leaves its mark forever on each patient (Alligood, 2010, p. 183). Has a patient ever left a mark forever on you? Please explain in a blog post that is three to five sentences long.
Please refer to this for details on how this activity will be graded.
To Create a blog entry:
- Select the Add a New Topic button.
- Create your blog entry
- Select Post to Blog.
There are many patients that have come through my unit that have stuck out or left a mark on me but there was one in particular I will always remember. This patient was very successful in his career and was very financially well off as he often reiterated. He was not stating this as a bragging right, but rather kept repeating it because at the end of the day, his money did not matter. This patient had a long history with idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis. He had been on the list pending a bilateral lung transplant for quite some time, having had two failed attempts prior. His disease was progressing rapidly as his oxygen demand increased and he was visibly become more dyspneic with exertion each day. The doctors had goals of care meetings with the patient and care team where we discussed the possibility of the patient needing to be intubated while waiting for lungs as this progressed. We luckily did not have to see that day. He remained on my unit for around 60 days before lungs finally became available. Over the weeks he was on the floor, I spent many of my shifts assigned to him. We spent a lot of time talking and his view on life and dying was pretty incredible. He was so calm waiting knowing he might get too sick to still be eligible for lungs by the time they became available. This patient left a mark on me I will never forget.
The patient that I will never forget is the first patient who died in my care. My patient was a 68 years old male, diabetic, had CHF and on this particular admission was being treated for endocarditis. As I came on night shift, his daughters were with him but having been there all day – were headed out. They asked me to call if anything seemed imminent but otherwise stated they would see him in the morning. Once I had my early shift responsibilities completed, for some reason I went back to his room, and the charting I would normally do at the nurses station or somewhere else on the unit I decided to do while chatting with him. My instincts made me want to keep an eye on him. On the surface we appeared to have very little in common but we settled on discussing Fathers & Daughters. He provided his prospectives on the privilege of being a “girl dad” and I shared my prospectives on how much i enjoyed being a “daddy’s girl”. We sort of confirmed each others theories. The whole time we were talking I saw him going into bradycardia but he was a DNR. As casually as I could, I brought the DNR up in conversation but he was resolute. I was just struck by how calm he was. I told him I was going to call his daughters and he agreed that he would like to see them. They made it back just in time express their love and watch his eyes close. Although they were present, I didn’t realize I was holding his hand until they thanked me for his care. This was the first time I had ever personally witnessed someone passing. He was comfortable & unafraid. The moment was a significant for me as much for its eventfulness, and uneventfulness. I didn’t realize how apprehensive I had been about this eventuality in my career. I grew up that night. His was a simple passing, that helped me to see & understand that death was a part of life. I still cried, and felt sadness for the passing a life. I wouldn’t change anything that happened that night, and I will never forget him.
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