Tag Archives: rn blog

Bringing Beauty and Creativity to Nursing Practice

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Note: A reader emailed a request I write about bringing beauty and creativity to nursing practice. Here goes…

Nurse as Sisyphus by jparadisi 2012

Nurse as Sisyphus by jparadisi 2012

Finding beauty and creativity in our daily lives is vital for happiness. Art is a path along which the breadcrumbs leading us to both are found. This statement seems pretentious in a society cutting the study of art (music, dance, literature, painting, and drawing) from its educational system, regarding it no more necessary than so much fat sucked away through liposuction. Access to art is also eroding: on a recent trip, my husband and I paid $15 each for admittance to an art museum. Without funding, art, like health care, may soon be accessible to a decreasing number of people.

Art is essential in bringing beauty and creativity to nursing practice because it provides the humanitarian tools needed to find self-worth in a job that is complex, and often overwhelming, with waves of life and death crashing over our heads. It’s easier to empty a bedpan if you consider Prometheus and his love of humanity while you clean. For other nursing tasks, the punishment of futility dealt to Sisyphus perhaps comes to mind more often. The longevity of Shakespeare’s plays speaks to their grasp of human psychology and motivation.

Art and literature provide archetypes we can apply to our modern lives.  Excluding the arts from a life science curriculum leaves us searching for meaning without a compass. The ability to apply meaningful ideas from art and literature to our daily lives promotes sustainable happiness.

Connecting patient care to images from art and literature fuels my writing and painting. It protects me from burnout. I credit it with the fact I still love being a nurse twenty-five years after becoming one. In the words of James M. Barrie,

“It is not in doing what you like, but in liking what you do that is the secret of happiness.”

Knitting for Communication This Week at TheONC

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This week, I blog about Knitting and Communication for TheONC. It’s a confessional post about lacking the right words for a friend with cancer, and finding a way to communicate through the craft of knitting. Sometimes pushing through frustration is necessary in creativity and relationships.

TheONC is an online community for oncology health care teams. Follow on Twitter @The_ONC and Like us on Facebook!

Stains Update: Share Your Advice

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Yesterday I wrote about efforts to remove yellow Easter candy dye stains from my favorite pair of white jeans. Today I’m happy to report after four washings, heavy doses of Shout, and gentle touches of bleach, the jeans are restored to pristine status.

Had my efforts failed, however, I had a back up plan. I received this advice from a reader and pass it on to you:

Mix some laundry detergent with white vinegar and rub on stain.  Let set – like over night.

Soak the stained area in white vinegar over night.

Wash.

Do not dry.  Check stain. 

Repeat.

If you have helpful stain removing tips,  please share them in the comments. Stains of an unusual variety plague nurses regularly. We can use all the help we can get!

By the way, Visualizing Your Creative Life is my latest post included among this week’s blogs at TheONC. The suggestions are easily adapted for use by oncology patients too.

Shift Observations: The End of The Dinosaur

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photo: jparadisi 2012

With the care of an archeologist sifting for fossils, I hold his right arm for a second time, turning it to and fro, sliding my fingers up and down searching for a vein suitable to accommodate an IV catheter.  I’ve already looked once, and now return after a fruitless search of his left arm. Decades of chronic illness, medications, and simply old age have done their work, leaving my patient with a spindly network of fragile veins shifting loosely under his skin.

“Everyone should be born with a spigot,” I think silently to myself. “Why doesn’t this patient have a port?” I know the answer without consulting his physician: he is very old, and his illness will likely overcome him. The IV infusion I will eventually administer will not save his life, only limp him along a bit longer.

Outside, cold grey clouds shower a mix of horizontal rain and snow beyond the window of the infusion clinic. An unseasonal storm threatens what promised to be an early spring.

With a slight shiver, my patient asks if I believe in a climate change so powerful it could wipe out life on Earth. Before answering, I take in the wrinkled, reptilian-like skin of his forearm, which I continue to study. Without looking up, I respond to his question, “You mean, like the Ice Age that killed the dinosaurs?” He nods.

Magically, I feel a small, but plump vein. The IV goes in slick as oil on the first stick. I can’t believe our luck. “Yeah, I believe in climate change, but this storm will not be our extinction.”

Commitment Makes You an Artist (or Nurse)

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If you aren’t reading the blogs at TheONC, you should. I’ve incorporated much new information from my blogger colleagues into my nursing practice. If you haven’t created a login and joined this lively online community, today is a great day to do so!

pencil on paper by jparadisi

Commitment Makes You an Artist (or Nurse) is my contribution this week’s discussion. Creativity, like nursing, requires time and practice. In this article I offer some practical advice to get you started.

While I’m on the topic of commitment, today is Certified Nurses Day. I hold OCN certification as an oncology nurse. In the past, I was pediatric CCRN certified. Specialty certification is a powerful way for nurses to commit to their practice. Congratulations to nurses who have taken this extra step in professional development and providing excellence in patient care!

New Post on TheONC: Finding Creative Permission

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Finding Creative Permission, my new post exploring creativity and nursing, is up at TheONC.

And Happy Valentine’s Day!

Living With Our Mistakes & Holes in Our Socks

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Knitting Two Socks at a Time on a Pair of Circular Needles. photo: jparadisi 2012

I’m learning to knit socks. If you read this blog regularly, you’ll recall learning to knit socks is one of my New Year’s Resolutions for 2012.  Since I don’t know what I’m doing anyway, I decided to learn the new method of knitting two socks at one time on a pair of circular needles, instead of one sock at a time on a single circular needle. Never mind only a few years ago I defined knitting as: making a tangled mess with yarn and sticks. Hey, I’m a girl who loves a challenge.  My audacity stems from years of the “see one, do one, teach one” on- the- job- training mentality most nurses rely on.

Fortunately, learning to knit socks two at a time is accompanied by patterns with clear diagrams and photographic illustrations. I found mine in Knitting Circles Around Socks by Antje Gillingham (Martingale & Company, publishers).

I’m happy to report I have successfully turned both heels. The most vexing problem has been confusing which of the four needle tips to use, then having to rip out and knit again previous rows after doing it wrong. I found one dropped stitch too, which is so far back at the beginning there is no way in hell I will rip out my work to redo it. I’ll simply learn to live with it.

If only nursing mistakes were as inconsequential. Who wouldn’t go back in time and fix the med error, rephrase the statement that made you sound dumb in front of coworkers, or treat differently the symptom, which turned out more significant than you realized at the time? Wouldn’t it be great if we could rip out our mistakes and knit them again like stitches dropped from a pair of needles?

We can’t.

Instead, I am aware of the importance my words carry when patients come to me with concerns or fears. I answer the same questions multiple times over the years of my career, but for the patient, their fears are new.  For everyone, I hope to get it right the first time: the right amount of compassion, the right understanding of the meaning of their words, the right kind of wisdom needed for a particular moment. If I get it wrong, coming across as abrupt, disinterested or intensifying fear rather than calming it, there is no going back to rip out stitches from the fabric created by my words and actions. They hang in our memories like dropped stitches; leaving an unsightly hole.

Nursing is more complex than knitting two socks with four needles. Often, there’s no way to go back and fix our mistakes. Sometimes the best we can do is learning from errors, acquire the necessary grace, and live with the resulting holes in our socks.

*Update: I finished knitting my first pair of socks last night.  See photo.

My First Pair of Knitted Socks! photo: jparadisi 2012


TheONC: A New Blogging Community for Oncology Nurses and Teams

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Last week CancerNetwork launched TheONC; an online community for oncology nurses and staff. TheONC is a gated site for professionals so login is required to participate. The video link below explains more fully:

video.asp?section_id=1687&doc_id=238579

TheONC features bloggers with a wide spectrum of expertise writing on various aspects of cancer care. As a contributing blogger, I write from the perspective of an artist working in oncology. Through weekly posts, readers and I will discuss creativity, and its pursuit, in nursing. Images of my artwork accompany the posts. My first went live yesterday.

Shift Observations: That First IV Start After Vacation

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photo: jparadisi 2012

Why does that very first IV start on the first shift back from a vacation always cause just a little apprehension?

My patient waits silently while I collect the supplies I need: a sterile IV pack, the angiocath, a normal saline flush. I tear a few small strips of tape and stick them to the edge of the bedside table, easily within reach, ready to secure the IV once it’s in the vein.

How many IV’s have I started over the past twenty-five years? Why does the first one after a vacation always feel like the first one ever?

My gloved fingers palpate the chosen vein one more time before I swab it clean, leaving a glistening sheen and contrasting shadow along its hill, a cairn on his forearm.

Collecting my thoughts, I focus on the vein until they are as sharp as the needle I use to puncture his skin and thread the catheter into the vein. A flash of blood tells me I’m in. Using one of the strips of tape, I secure the IV, then cover the site with a transparent dressing. It flushes easily.

I release my breath, which I realize I was holding.

I’m back.