(I was asked to deliver the graduation speech to the 2008 JTCC/CNP nursing students. Here is a copy of it.)
Congratulations, graduates, and welcome to a healing profession. You are nurses. Whatever you may do from here, wherever you may go I hope that you never forget that this is what you help to do. This is your greatest power, your greatest gift. You will reach into the hearts and minds of the sick and their families and you will plant two very important seeds, hope and love, and the fruit of these is healing.
These sound like lofty words, ridiculous words, the sort of words that you’d hear at, say, a pinning ceremony for new graduates, where the speaker is supposed to say grand things about the grand things you have done and will do. He or she will call you a nurse for the first time and you’ll look around wondering if they are talking about you. I have only been a nurse for a year now but I can tell you that I have done grand things, great things during that time and it has changed my life entirely. What I have received in return from my profession is leagues more than I have given and I have given as much of myself as I am able. This certainly was not my intention when I enrolled in nursing school.
When I walked into my first clinical, late mind you, holding that Good Humor uniform in my arms and a pair of shiny new white shoes, I was just about done with the whole thing. Our class had spent a few weeks in absolute dreadful confusion. The chapters were long and arduous to read. It was like being thrown into a foreign country with a $100 bag of supplies you didn’t know how to use. We had the look not of deer in the headlights, but of deer on the back of the pickup on the way to Bubba’s for skinning. All of us were thoroughly depressed. But we were brown-nosers to the core. So when Chas asked us why we wanted to be nurses, I piped up first on the way to the bathroom to change. Being the only male in the class I felt I better chime in quickly.
“I used to do shows for kids with AIDS in hospitals and I’ve always wanted to be a nurse since then,” I said. Now, most of this statement was true. I had done theater shows for kids in hospitals and it had meant a lot to me at the time. They are an audience that vibrates with love. However, being the only male there in a class full of women – all of whom I love dearly and would gladly have as my sister, by the way – I felt just a little out of place and to be honest a little intimidated. I had a feeling that if one of the girls went first the round of stories would start like this.
“I’ve dreamed of being a nurse since I was in 3rd grade.” All the girls would laugh and pat her arm.
“I’ve dreamed of being a nurse since I was in 1st grade.” All the girls would laugh and pat her arm.
Then it would be my turn. “I’ve dreamed of being a nurse since I found out they make lots of money and have really flexible hours and there’s tons of jobs.”
You see the dilemma I was in? I hadn’t ever really thought of being a nurse. Like most of my patients even today, I didn’t think men became nurses. I certainly had never seen one. They were like a rare, exotic species – The Male Nurse. There’s a stuffed one of us at Ripley’s Believe it or Not somewhere. Probably in Gatlinburg.
So I embellished a bit. I hadn’t really wanted to become a nurse. It wasn’t something I dreamed about. It never entered my mind when I was doing children’s theater that nursing might be a good profession for me. I had little to no thought that I might actually like the job or, god forbid, love it.
But I do.
I love it.
I love it.
I love it.
I love being a nurse.
It was the job, it is the job that I am meant to be doing at this time, not a moment before. It is the first job that I have ever felt uniquely qualified to do. It is the first job that has used almost all of my life experiences, good and bad. I have been a writer, a salesman, a carpenter, a college dropout, a house painter, a camp counselor, an actor, a music teacher, a mortgage processor, a store clerk for a drugstore, a college dropout again, a waiter, a baby wrangler for a family photographer, a director, a friend, a husband, a father. The amazing thing is that at some point I’ve used all these lessons in my interactions with my patients, the children that I care for. So it is with you. Every life experience you have had, good and bad, has brought you here to sit in these chairs on this Friday night. And it has brought the people behind, in front, around and above you, as well. Without them most likely you’d not have made it through the torture that is nursing school. They are what made my pinning special. Truthfully, it was something I had no desire to attend. But then I had a chance to see my children’s faces and my wife’s and the faces of the crazy broads in the program with me. And when we were announced as nursing graduates I felt very proud of what I’d done, what we’d endured. The pin was placed on my shoulder and I stood up here as a nurse.
And then I went home. Time to get a job. I’d like to say I calmly surveyed the field and took the best of several offers. I’d like to say that. I’d like to say hospitals were chomping at the bit to hire me into pediatrics, the only field I had any interest in going into. I got exactly one positive response in my first two to three weeks of looking. It wasn’t even a job that sounded like I’d enjoy it. Pediatric psychiatry. I could just imagine hundreds of angst-ridden teens hating me with their every zit. I struggled with the suggestion from some nurses already in the field to do a year on a medical floor first. After all that time learning these new skills, it did seem a shame that I might lose what I’ve gained. Then one nurse on the floor where I was a tech told me to do what I loved, and do it from the beginning. And I loved our psych rotation and I loved our pediatric rotation. I can tell you that I was absolutely the only one who loved both. Some one and not the other, but no one else had felt as home as I did in those two places. Could this be the job for me then? Well, seeing as I had no other offers and my wife was thinking I better start putting the Playstation down since it wasn’t helping to pay the bills, I took the job. The next day another offer came in, but I was already committed. I joined the Virginia Treatment Center for Children in August of last year.
My wife, who teaches public speaking here at John Tyler, told me I should put a story in about here. Something that seems to sum up how I fit in where I work. Here goes.
Within my first few weeks at the hospital I met a 6-year-old girl. I won’t go into the details of her life up until that time. They were the kinds of details that made you feel like some people are not human to act as they do. She had been left with barely any skills to survive and interact in this world, so she stepped out of it quite often to go to a safer place for her. To us, though, this looked like a child out of control. One of the first times I saw her two nurses were moving her with great difficulty into a seclusion room, a small maybe 6X6 room with nothing in it. The practice for a full seclusion is to shut the door and lock it and stand outside and talk to the child until they have calmed down. It’s one of the saddest things to witness and I am very proud to say that my hospital is working unbelievably hard to discontinue this practice. Their rates of seclusions and restraints have plummeted in the previous two years.
This day, however, with this child she had been moved to seclusion. She’d been there before. She usually lost so much control that her mind went elsewhere and when she did this there seemed like little you could do for her. People stayed away. I can’t. I’m not good at staying away. I sort of sat or laid down in the doorway, half in/half out of the room. My gut told me to be small, as small as possible, and timid. I asked someone to bring me some paper and some was handed to me. I propped myself up on my elbows with the girl dug into a corner of the room beside me. I tried not to look at her but rather at the paper in front of me. I started to draw. I’m not much of an artist now but I knew I could draw a kite. Kites I can do. I drew one with a long, long string that rose from the bottom of the page up to the top where the kite was. I drew a girl holding the string. I named the girl Princess Mary, after the girl beside me. I told her a story about her kite. It was very important for me to tell her that this was her kite and no one else’s. Part of me waited to be spit on and hit. That’s usually what she did. But again my gut told me she wouldn’t. It told me if I could talk long enough about the kite and get her to hear about it at some point that she might gently come back. So I talked and talked. I told her how high the kite was, how winds pulled at it and sometimes whipped it round and round, but how strong the princess was that held the string. I drew the kite higher and higher into the sky, up into outer space. I drew planets and space ships. I told about all the things the kite could see from so high, that no one could bother the kite up there. That it was safe. That it was beautiful. A beautiful kite like no other. And it was Mary’s. Hers. I told her again and again how strong it was. I paused at some point in the story and asked her if it was okay to wipe some of the spit from her mouth. It was drooling down her chin and onto her clothes. I did this very carefully, and nothing more. I moved back and continued with the story.
I don’t know how long I sat there. Maybe 10 minutes. Maybe more. Someone else showed up behind me and I told Mary I’d be right back. That I was going to get her a drink of punch. I got her the punch and the other nurse escorted her back to the unit. I stood there for a moment. You know what I was thinking?
I love being a nurse.
Since that time I’ve been scratched and kicked and punched and spit at. I’ve been called a tall, white cracker and some things a bit worse. I’ve been shoved and pulled. I’ve been scheduled for days I hadn’t signed up for, for too many days. I’ve gotten angry at administration. I’ve felt like the best nurse in the building and the worse nurse to ever wear scrubs. I’ve been told I’m wonderful at communicating and that I am horrible at communicating. Now those of you who head into Med-Surg maybe you won’t get this. Maybe it is some kind of test you have to pass in the Psych field. I think probably each of you will experience this to some extent. I know some of the women I graduated with faced these and other, harder challenges out there. If you’ve met the ones to be in your seats now you are up to any challenge out there.
That’s the rough of it.
There is a great story I read the other day. A man was complaining to his god, his higher power, whatever you wish to call it. He said, “There is so much disease and death and destruction. There are so many horrible things being done out there to people. Why, why don’t you do anything about it?”
His god answers him. “I did,” he says. “I made you.”
And so he made me. Then he made me a nurse.
I have sat in seclusion rooms with tiny children and made up stories and sang songs. I have helped paint the units brighter colors. I’ve walked and swung on swingsets and played hide and seek and colored pictures of cars and superheroes. I’ve told numerous children that they are special and loved and worthwhile. I’ve given meds to help them sleep or help them slow down or help them come down or come back from wherever it is they go. I’ve watched as their fists slowly come unclenched and they begin to cry. And I feel blessed to be there for this, to be a part of this.
The funniest, most ironic thing about this is that it is one of the very first lessons we are taught as nursing students – the importance of presence. We lose this sometimes in our quest to digest several dozen heavy textbooks over a 2-year period. We can lose sight of this asset and live in fear that we do not know enough stuff. The more we worry about the stuff the further we get away from our presence. The further we get away from this, the further we get away from our patients. Too far away and we are not healing anymore, we are putting on band-aids. Anyone can do that.
The last thing I have to say may sound a bit corny. You’ll have to excuse me. I’m a psych nurse, after all. I said it to a fellow nurse at my hospital a few weeks ago.
I think our job is a sacred one. I think that the art of healing is a privilege. It is one filled with love and with compassion. Treat your patients with this love and compassion. You can feel it right in your gut here. Let it guide every encounter with them. If you do this often enough your job will take on an entirely new meaning for you. Your words, your touch, your presence will heal. Welcome, again, to a healing profession.
You are nurses.
