A physician writes a tribute to nursing

Echo opinion column published in The Effingham Daily News, in Effingham Illinois by columnist Nash Naam:

It was my first day of my new rotation as a junior resident at St. Louis University hospital’s cardiac surgery unit. 

Our hospital, in the early 1980s, was one of only two hospitals in St. Louis that performed open heart surgery, which was still in its infancy. That day, our unit performed 10 open heart surgeries in addition to the 11 that were performed the day before. And on that first day, I was also on call in the Cardiac Surgery Intensive Care Unit.

After finishing the evening rounds, everyone went home, leaving me in the ICU to take care of 21 open heart surgery patients. 

I was petrified! That was shortly after coming from Egypt, where my training was in orthopedic surgery – which is a world apart from open heart surgery.

I stood in the ICU facing a cluster of 21 monitors with their flashy colorful rendition of each patient’s vital signs, cardiac output, pulmonary pressure, and hundreds of other pieces of information. Almost everything on the monitors was hieroglyphic to me. I did not know what to do. My chief resident had told me to call him if I had any questions. But standing there, I had a million questions. And if I called to tell him that, it meant the termination of my residency.

As I was lost in my deep thinking, paralyzed by fear and apprehension, I felt a light gentle touch on my shoulder. I turned and looked to find one of the nurses, Nurse Anderson, with a reassuring smile. It appeared that she, somehow, felt my anxiety and with that beautiful and reassuring smile she erased most of that anxiety.

She said in a soft voice: “Don’t worry! I will go over every patient with you.”

She went with me over every patient in the ICU, explaining and deciphering the information about them. She also told me what each attending surgeon required of his/her patients. Some would like to be called if a patient had 20 cc of drainage in the chest tubes while others did not want to be bothered before at least 200cc. She taught me in a couple of hours more than I had learned in months.

I did not sleep that night. I was mesmerized watching Nurse Anderson flying from room to room like a butterfly, touching, whispering, and reassuring every patient. Her light touch, her reassuring smile, and her soft soothing voice doing wonders for those critically ill patients. And I realized then that I was watching the perfect demonstration of what nursing was all about, competence, knowledge, smiles, dedication, care, touch, and compassion.

I have always had a deep respect for the nurses I worked with, but with Nurse Anderson, exemplifying the best in the nursing profession, my deep respect and appreciation for nurses grew a million folds. And that was reflected in the way I opened myself to learn more from nurses and the deep respect and admiration by which I treated them. In less than nine months at that hospital I was awarded the “Nurses Award to the Best House Officer.” That award had never been given to any surgery resident since those residents are known for being “full of themselves”.

Through my career I have worked with hundreds, if not thousands, of nurses. I have the utmost respect, admiration, and reverences for all of them.

Here in our community, I have been privileged to work with wonderful nurses at St. Anthony’s Memorial Hospital, Effingham Surgery Center, Sarah Bush Lincoln Hospital and at our office. I can’t say enough about how those nurses served their patients and their profession with integrity, dedication, hard work, selflessness, and total commitment to their mission. I have learned to listen to the nurses, and I have never regretted that. They have a deep insight on how each patient’s needs are unique and different and how to approach each patient with an individual adaptation that suits that particular patient.

The COVID-19 pandemic demonstrated to all of us how valuable and precious our nurses are. Everywhere in the country and the world, nurses were the ones who stayed with their COVID patients. They knew the risk, but they took that risk in order to serve their patients. They put their lives on the line to protect, comfort and support their patients. There is no other profession that even comes close to that level of dedication, sacrifice and commitment.

According to Gallup poll and for an impressive 20 years running, nursing was rated as the most trusted profession once again in 2021. This reflects the public’s trust in nurses. But for someone who works closely with many nurses in different locations, I would venture to say that it is really a privilege to work with such dedicated, compassionate, selfless, and caring professionals.

We are all lucky to have those angels taking care of us.

A big thank you to all those angels walking among us, spreading rays of sunshine and illuminating our lives in times of great need. They are not only Angles of Mercy, but also angels of hope and angels of love. And with their warm encouraging smiles, soft reassuring whispers and selfless devotion they infuse in our lives a great deal of hope, beauty, and light.

And before I forget, a very special thank you to Nurse Anderson!