Outpatient Surgery Magazine

Why Can't He Eat or Drink After Midnight? - March 2016 - Subscribe to Outpatient Surgery Magazine

Outpatient Surgery Magazine, providing current information on Surgical Services, Surgical Facility Administration, Outpatient Surgery News and Trends, OR Excellence and more.

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with the computer? Watch the next code blue and check out how fast we think and run. Do we look lazy to them? Do we look lightweight? Do we look scared? Not on your life. We're there when the moment strikes, whether we're tired or hungry, on good days and bad, regard- less of whether we get along with the surgeon. Check out a nurse's pockets if you want to see how prepared we are for any eventuality. (I actually wear 2 scrub jackets: not on account of chilly OR temps, but because it provides me with more pockets for my stuff.) We know our patients so well, inside and out, and keep you safe. Even the slightest change in temperature, color or mood alerts us that something isn't quite right. Nurses have the honor and the privilege to be present when you first open your eyes on the world, and we'll be there to close them when it's your time to leave it. Our destinies I chose nursing, or it chose me, and it gets my hackles up when someone outside the profession thinks they know what makes up a nurse. Let me put it this way: Could we do what that questionably talented HR rep who was checking references does? As somebody famous once said, I'd be conceited if I said I could, but I'd be lying if I said I couldn't. Could she do what 3.1 million of us nurses do every day? I'm going to go out on a limb here and say, not a chance. But then, that's not her purpose. Are we truly born to the purpose of nursing and the possibility of changing lives? I don't know. But I figure that, in all these years that I've been "just a nurse," my ability to make a positive difference in more than a few of the lives that fate put before me means that I've succeeded in what I show up at work to do. OSM Ms. Watkins can be reached at pwatkins12@comcast.net. M A R C H 2 0 1 6 • O U T PA T I E N TS U R G E R Y. N E T • 1 6 1

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