just a job...

this weekend i worked three days in a row. i also agreed to go in two hours
early on my last day because they were anticipating being severely short
staffed. not the end of the world, but by midnight on sunday, i was dead
tired. there was this guy i had been working with for most of the night who
required a lot of attention. the oxygen saturation of his blood without any
supplemental oxygen was pretty low, so they had him on a machine that forced
air into his lungs every time he breathed in. pretty fancy stuff. anyhow,
he was hungry, so i would let him take it off for a few minutes at a time to
eat, and wipe off the dried spit around his mouth at the same time. he told
me i was one of the "nice nurses," when it was taking a long time to get him
a bed on one of the units (due to a clerical error) we joked that he just
wanted to stay downstairs with us. when his iv came out, i found him a
nurse who was better at iv's than me so he wouldn't have to be stuck more
than once. at the end of the night, i went over to the other side of the
emergency department to wash my hands and find the head nurse to see who my
relief was going to be. as i was walking out, i said "i'll be right back."
in my exhaustion, as soon as i found the head nurse, i found the guy who was
relieving me, said goodnight, and left. when i was gone, i remembered that
i never said goodbye. if i've spent a lot of time with a patient, i usually
like to wish them well, either when i leave or when they go up to the floor.
i felt horrible. not because i think that i held any great place in this
person's life, but because i feel like when i stop saying hello and goodbye
to patients, i start dehumanizing them. "they" collectively become my job,
not people who are having a rough day, are not well, and need help. it's
just not the kind of nurse i want to be. i think i've figured out while
working at this hospital that i am more interested in public health and
policy than in bedside nursing, but at the same time i certainly don't want
to treat this like a stepping stone. we'll see...