A Whack on the Head Stirs Compassion

Earlier this year my husband came home from the gym to find me sitting in a chair in our family room, staring blankly into space, the right side of my face red and swollen, the black bruise underneath my chin beginning to streak down my neck.

For about ten minutes he talked to me, and I to him, as he tried to pry an explanation from me. I was not a fount of information, asking more questions than giving answers.

Then, my husband remarked that the front of my clothing was cold and damp, indicating that I may have been lying outside on snow and ice for a while. My hearing his comment marked my return to the land of the living. It was exactly like flipping on a light switch. I went from total mental fog to complete awareness, just that fast.

Our best guess is that I slipped on the ice on our driveway, fell forward, broke my fall with my face and lost consciousness. At some point, I got up, picked up our recycle bins, carried them into the garage, put down the garage door and removed my shoes before entering the house. Based on the placement of items I’d been carrying, I’d wandered around inside the house before plopping into the chair where my husband found me.

I remember nothing, nil, nada of any of this.

After regaining my wits, one of my first thoughts was, “I owe so many of my patients a big apology.”

Early in my nursing career I had worked in ER where daily cases of concussion were pretty much a sure thing. Of course, I knew head trauma caused befuddlement but, obviously, I didn’t know exactly how that played out--that patients could walk around, seeming to function almost normally, but really not be of this world. Just because my patients were talking to me didn’t mean they could comprehend or retain anything I said to them. I know now that I expected too much of them and probably wasn’t as patient as I should have been (with any luck, maybe my patients don't remember that part of their ER experience). If I’d been told that I could function and converse the way I did and not have a single memory of it, I wouldn’t have believed it. As with so many things in life, you live, you learn, you gain compassion.

Walkout by Filipino Nurses Results in Indictment

In April of 2005 a group of 27 Filipino nurses, who were recruited for jobs in this country by a US agency, resigned en masse from the New York nursing home that employed them. In October of 2007, as a result of their actions, 11 of them were indicted on criminal charges of professional misconduct and patient endangerment.

The nurses contend that the terms of the contracts they signed before arriving in the US were not honored. They found they would be working in a nursing home other than the one specified in their contracts. Initially, some were made to work as clerks at half the salary they were to receive in RN positions. They accuse the nursing home of failing to pay overtime and differential pay, providing insufficient training for their job responsibilities and assigning each nurse more patients than could be safely cared for.

The walkout incited a spate of criticism from other nurses who said that nurses should never walk out on their patients. The uproar from nurses who oppose the indictment has been even louder. Please understand, the nurses who resigned did not do so in the middle of their shifts. They did not leave patients with no one to care for them. They did leave the nursing home short handed but they had been voicing their complaints over a period of several months without appreciable response from management.

Management was aware of trouble brewing, so the resignations could not have been a complete surprise. It is likely that management assumed the nurses would never have the nerve, gumption, or whatever, to walk away.

So, should the nurses have stayed on board, working under what amounted to slavemaster rule? Certainly not. The agency and the nursing home owner were bullies, exercising undue power and control over a vulnerable group of nurses.

The American Nurses Association and the New York State Nurses Association are standing in defense of the Filipino nurses. They are vocal in their condemnation of the exploitation of immigrant RNs by unscrupulous US employers and, as a deterrent, are calling for better enforcement of immigrant worker laws.

I certainly don’t fault the nurses for doing what they had to do. They were desperate and desperate people do desperate things.

Southern California Wildfire Evacuation

Nurses faced—and conquered—unexpected challenges this past October when entire hospital populations had to be evacuated because of the California wildfires. We’re now hearing stories of nurses stepping up to the plate to ensure the safety of their patients during that frightening time. Actually, it might be more accurate to say there are no stories of nurses who didn’t. Would I have been at the plate? Would you have?

Early on the second day of the fires, I was safely in my home in Colorado, sipping coffee and watching Matt Lauer’s onsite coverage of the fire's devastation on television. At the same time, Lorie Shoemaker, RN, Chief Nursing Officer at Pomerado Hospital in Poway in San Diego County, was giving the order to evacuate patients and staff from her hospital.

She described her nursing staff as “fabulous” and said that nurses always rise to the top in emergency situations because that’s what nurses do. I’d ask myself again, “Would I rise to the top?”

Another RN at Pomerado, Farinah Mojadedi, wasn’t scheduled to work the day of the evacuation but went to help at the hospital because other nurses couldn’t get there. She said the nurses were calm, efficient, uncomplaining and a great team.

Expressing admiration for the nursing staff, and understandably emotional, Lorie Shoemaker choked up as she spoke about the selflessness of her nurses in protecting their patients and co-workers.

Some Pomerado nurses showed up to help with the evacuation in cars packed with valuables, and even pets, from their own fire-threatened homes. That’s dedication.

Hearing all this, I had to wonder if I would be as self-sacrificing in the same situation. Would I separate myself from my family in such a frightening time to move patients to safety? Would I? I don’t know.

Share your thoughts on how you’d handle a crisis