I am a nurse… But I am black first.

I am watching the protests around this country and realizing just how little people knew about the racism that black people still experience. I have sat in my department and listened to people complain about the protests without understanding what it is we are protesting.

We want justice and equality as a people!

I quickly realized that while I will always be a nurse, which I have always seen as my identity, I am black first.

My mind goes back to all those times I’ve had patients hand me their trash because they thought I was EVS, even though I wear the same ciel blue as all their previous nurses. I go back to the times where my patient assumed I was the tech and my white tech was the nurse, and looked almost dismayed when my tech corrected them. I go back to being called “n*gger” multiple times by patients who saw no issue with using the word and fully meant it as an insult. I go back to being the only black nurse on a shift and not being included in conversations.

I realize that I am a nurse but I have always been black first.

I am proud to be black.

I am proud to be a nurse.

Both of those things are a part of me, they are intertwined.

Instead of being angry at comments based on ignorance of what is really happening, I have started educating my coworkers. I am speaking on the black experience in this country. I now speak up about what police mean to black individuals. I speak on our experiences. I talk to my coworkers about racism at its core.

I don’t want to be the “angry black woman”, I want to be the black woman that educates on the black perspective.

I am a black nurse, I carry black experiences, I will not carry them quietly.

Set up… To fail

So, the higher ups have decided to implement new changes in our department to make us more “efficient”.

😒🙄

Are the changes going to work?

No.

I say no, not because I am against change. I embrace change and fully believe medicine is an ever changing field.

I say no because the changes are rigid.

Our department is very fluid. We may not have a single patient one minute, and the next minute 6 outpatients are here and there is an vented ICU patient on the way down and a patient waiting to go back to their room. Our patient flow changes throughout the day and unfortunately the decision makers don’t recognize that. They see numbers. They see productivity. Pie charts and bar graphs.

Patient care just doesn’t work like that.

However, we are going to implement the changes. We will go along with what management wants. We will grumble and groan as we see how poorly the changes work. We aren’t afraid to speak up. The speaking has been done. At this point, we are going along so we can watch the changes fail and create more problems. We are doing this so that they can see how inefficient their decisions are.

Sometimes the only way to get through to someone is to stop talking.

Appreciated

A while ago my nurse manager came down to the department I was in to check on me.

My nurse manager came to check on me.

The day was turning into a hot mess and I had to get help from our sister nursing department to help get things back on track and help me put out the flames. After things started to calm down, my nurse manager came down to where I was to check on me and do you know what she said? “Fred, I am so glad I hired you.”

Say. What?

Did… Did she just show appreciation for how hard I was working?

HOLY HELL MANAGERS DO THAT?!?

Turns out, good management does. I cannot even count how many times either my nurse clinician or nurse manager has popped up in the department giving us updates or just checking in.

I have never really had that happen before. In fact, I was so unused to it that the first time my nurse clinician came down to the department checking in I thought I was in trouble! I really thought I had gotten reported for something and was about to be written up! That is how little I was used to seeing management (unless they were asking if we updated our whiteboards).

I was talking to another floor nurse, in fact, the one from the last blog, and telling her about management coming and checking in and she was also flabbergasted. She, too, was only used to seeing management whenever there was an issue.

That’s sad.

I don’t place 100% of the blame on management, though. I know they are encountering the same problem. Their higher-ups only want to discuss what they are doing wrong, give them unrealistic expectations, and unrealistic time-frames to complete the unrealistic expectations. Meeting after meeting they get bombarded with complaints. It’s a miserable existence and I can totally understand why so many nurse managers leave the job.

This is a bigger problem with how hospitals are a business focused more on numbers than patients. It trickles down. Miserable management creates miserable staff, and that leads to the high turnover rates in the nursing field.

No one feels appreciated and that needs to change.

I am lucky enough to work in a department where I actually feel appreciated. Yes, we have our foolishness just like every other area in the hospital. However, I find myself far less stressed in this position. I want more nurses to be able to feel this way. I want it to get to a point where seeing management becomes a positive thing. I wonder how we, as a group, can change this?