When you're not quite mentally or emotionally prepared for an interview.

   

        "So is Nursing everything you thought it would be?" The question cut me, smooth and clean like one of those fancy Japanese knives, and for a pause I couldn’t answer. “Well no not really I stammered.. its much more of course, er than I thought it would be. Much harder really. Haa” my laugh trailed off, they didn’t get the joke, possibly because there was no joke. The panel of nurses and directors stared at me in my polka-doted blue blouse, I'm still not sure what they expected me to say but my answer was obviously no the right one.  With less than a year of critical care experience in my pockets and a resume half a page long I knew I wasn’t impressive, and in an interview oh how badly we want to impress. I didn’t get the fancy teaching hospital job. Big surprise. This isn’t the winners circle if you’re looking for that I can possibly direct you elsewhere. But in that interview I learned something about myself. Being a nurse is not what I thought it would be. This role is different than the picture of Florence nightingale daintily dabbing fevered foreheads I had subconsciously rendered in my mind throughout nursing school. Nor is it the action packed soap I had seen on TV. Being a RN in a small community ICU has been filled with more heartache than I would have thought possible in such a small ten bed space. I have grown into someone who deals with death and dying everyday, wounds the size of fists, and so many various bodily fluids. This isn’t a how-to blog. If anything it's a place of rest. I know I can’t be the only person whose heart is a little heavier for choosing the profession of a nurse instead of say Real Estate agent. Working so closely with people who are at their most critical points, maybe of their life, on a daily can be exhausting. 

One thing I have found to ease this pain is to leave their stories here. I remember them all. I pray for them all and I honor them. Every one of my patient’s, the ones whose deaths were in many ways a relief from untold sufferings to the deaths that were shocking and unfair. In many ways the role of a nurse who works so closely with people in their last days is to carry their memories after they are gone. I like to think of myself as a ‘rememberer’ I hold the memories of the patients I have lost and give them honor through this. Most had families by their beds in the end but many died alone, then again because of us, they weren't really alone were they? That's what I never knew or expected my role as a nurse would be. How do you make that seem upbeat in an interview? Only that at the end of the day I know I am not alone. As nurses we are many, we are nurse strong, and that is something spec-tac-u-larrr.