School for New Learning
Class: New Discovery Workshop
Teacher, Toni Gainer
Learning Autobiography
I had thought that after high school I would just get married and live happily ever after. (I was the designated "dumb" one in the family, so college was out of the question). When that didn't happen I was forced to get a job and then to actually think about my future. I worked at several different downtown office jobs: employment counselor, file clerk, figure clerk, and receptionist - I couldn't stand any of them for long. After about a year I realized that I could not work in an office pushing papers for a living. I knew I needed to do something that affected me in the heart. I told my mom that I wanted to work with children; she said I could go to the local hospital and work as a nurse's aide in the pediatric unit. To my delight they hired me.
Working as a nurse's aide, especially with sick children, was a major life event for me. I went home crying every day for 6 months! The nurses I worked with would say things like, "You'll toughen up" or "You'll get cold and hard". Each day when I came home in tears my mom would say "Nurses are supposed to care about their patients". All I had to do was help draw a child's blood and I would cry, imagine how I would be if a child died of leukemia. I learned that I could come to deal with it; I had my doubts about becoming cold and hard though. I did this for about 3 years; the whole time the nurses were saying that I should go to nursing school because I was good with the kids. The parents and kids reinforced my caring behaviors: the kids with hugs, coloring me pictures or giving me presents, and the parents telling me how much they appreciated my caring for their children. I felt worthwhile, and needed and that I was "helping people".
I then went to Practical Nursing school which took 1 year. My teachers told me that I did best when in complex situations like those in intensive care; they told me that I was smart - I was shocked and did not believe it - yet. I was learning to see myself through the eyes and opinions of others not in my family.
I then spent about 15 years working in various settings as an L.P.N. (Licensed Practical Nurse). The longest job I had was in a hospital recovery room. This was a very enlightening experience because I was able to compare myself with others. Most of my coworkers told me that I should not waste my time working as an L.P.N., doing the same work as an R.N., but getting less money. My head nurse once told me that if she were sick she would like me to care for her; she watched me touch my patients and knew that I cared. I learned that I could make a difference by just touching someone; I imagined what I could do if I advanced my education.
My last job as an L.P.N. was in an oncology unit (a unit to care for patients with cancer). This was an enormously profound experience. It was accepted practice to sit on the patient's bed, hug patients and families if it seemed like the thing to do at the time, and use our humanity. Words are not enough to say what it feels like to help someone die. Believe it or not, it enriched my life. I learned that I could comfortably talk openly about the unspeakable and help others to begin to do so. I felt I was good at this type of communication. A friend took a class in the psychology of death and dying; I read all the required material for the class and more.
I went to nursing school for my R.N. at Indiana University. My ex-husband had said, "They won't let you go to college, you flunked all through high school". A man from the university told me in an interview after my entrance tests that I would have "no trouble" in college. He said some test I took (I think it was a vocabulary test) showed that I was in the ninety-seventh percentile; of course, I thought that meant that ninety-seven percent of the population were smarter than me! I don't think I have yet gotten over that shock.
I did very well in college, graduated with distinction, passed my R.N. state board exams, and was set to start my new career - I was finally an R.N..
Soon after I graduated my husband and I got divorced after 14 years of conflict. In retrospect, I see that I had been seeing myself through his eyes; I now would find out who I really was. I also lost my dad. I learned about dealing with losses in my own life; after dealing with these "biggies" you grow stronger inwardly.
As an R.N., I have now spent 6 years working in hospital intensive care units. I became proficient with all the latest technology; I have developed "gut" instincts about my patients through experiences that you can't learn in school. I sometimes, despite adverse clinical signs, "just knew" that my patient was OK.
This type of work is very stressful for many reasons. I frequently did not believe in the treatments that I am responsible for being involved in. I frequently come home feeling as if someone put a vacuum cleaner on my head and my heart - it's that draining. I recently discovered (via the New Discovery Workshop) a way to verbalize why I am seeking a career change; I feel dissonance about my work. I have developed strong values in regard to human rights: the right to die, the right to refuse treatment, the right to question treatment, and the right to have medical information communicated in a way that can be understood by a person whose life is a stake. Because of the lack of healthy communication in health care people suffer needlessly. I went into this work to "help", I frequently feel as if I am torturing my patients.
A professor I had at Purdue University, in a communications class, told me about a new field called Health Communication; she said she thought I would be a natural in this field (she also said I was a born communicator). Through her I received a periodical called Health Communication and after reading one or two articles realized that this type of work may be a way to change careers without throwing away all the experience I have in nursing. I decided that I wanted to get a degree in communication.
Part of my value dissonance involves the ethics of health care. I want to learn more about ethics and law; I plan to do private consulting with patients, families, and anyone who is faced with serious illness. I think with the aging population our society will have to face what it's doing with the technology. We will have to question whether or not it's good for society or for the individual to be putting every 90-year-old on a respirator when she stops breathing. We should also be able to make those decisions ahead of time.
My long-term strategy is, after graduate education, to teach physicians about communication with patients. Too many do not communicate with them at all. If the older doctors decide they do not choose to communicate with their patients they can pay for my services to do so for them. I recall helping a doctor to die of cancer and asking him how his peers were in helping him to cope. He laughed and said, "They run in this room and are out that door within 2 seconds - they can't deal with it".
Nurses do not have time nor do they frequently have the nerve to tell patients the truth for fear the doctor will say they are overstepping their bounds. I recall recently hearing one nurse tell another nurse that Pat Anderson might be starting a new trend in nursing - telling patients the truth; I had had the nerve to tell a dying Aides patient that he had a choice about how he wanted to die; I told him he could refuse the respirator and he did.
I still want to help people, but I want to use my communication skills with my experience in nursing to do so. It's been 24 years since those nurses told me that I would get "cold and hard" or "toughen up"; I now know that I will never, thank God, be "cold and hard."
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