What nurses taught me about compassionate care

by Kenneth H. Cohn In anticipation of National Nurses Week, I dedicate my monthly guest post to them not only because my wife of 28 years is a nurse but also because nurses have taught me lessons about how to be a more caring physician. I reinforce my previous salute to Nikki, an emergency room nurse in Massachusetts who took me aside and told me, "Just because that was your eighth patient with the same condition doesn't mean that it was her eighth sprain." Eventually, I got over my wounded pride and adopted the perspective that she viewed me as teachable. I believe that my reverence for what nurses do for patients emanates from my father's teaching. As I have mentioned," as a 16-year-old, I asked my father, a practicing neurosurgeon at a community teaching hospital, "Who do the residents learn from? From you or from nurses ... " He said, "Mainly from me. Only those who are smart enough learn from the nurses." I also had the privilege of working with nurses from Texas to showcase the progress that they made despite limited resources to leverage strategic collaboration to improve care for their community, increasing their pool of scarce operating room nurses, and obtaining magnet status for nearby hospitals to recruit and retain qualified personnel. When I was associate professor at Dartmouth, nurses taught me that an important goal for a residency program in surgery is to teach communication skills. Several of them also taught me: When one door closes, many others o...
Source: hospital impact - Category: Health Managers Authors: Source Type: blogs