My Most Rewarding Nursing Experience

Laura talks about her most rewarding nursing experience and gives us some of the lessons that it taught her.

Topics Covered In This Article

Introduction

How It Started

Out And About

What Happened Next?

Reflections On The Experience

Conclusion

Introduction

Hey guys my name is Laura I am one of the Nurses from the NHS and today I would like to share with you one of the best patient-Nurse experiences I have ever experienced.

I am going to talk about my experience with one patient I met a while ago.

I met this person in 2017 when I transferred from elderly care to hemato oncology care.

You know, when you start in a new ward at the beginning you are supernumerary and you are trying to learn as much as possible how it is working in that ward and also you are trying to refresh as much as possible yourself about the specialty.

That’s when I was still a supernumerary, I first met the patient protagonist of this story, and today we will call him for example, James.

How It Started

As I said I was a band 5 Nurse just starting on the ward and when I met for the first time, James.

Quite quickly, me, and half of the service empathized with him.

He stayed on the hospital couple of weeks for chemotherapy and transplant and then was discharged.

Unfortunately he had come back some weeks after for much longer period because he had some complications and that’s when I started to talk more to him and get to know him.

He actually had a very hard time at the hospital, I cannot give many details because this is a real case but this patient was about to die while in the hospital.

A miracle happened and a trial drug appeared on his way improving a lot his situation, in a way that eventually, he stopped having complications after his bone marrow transplant.

When James got discharged from the ward and he just had to go to the outpatients setting for review, so all the team working on the ward hoped in the best way to not see him again on the ward.

Myself as the rest of the team we were really happy for him and we continued working with the rest of the patients as usual.

Out And About

One day walking around the city, I was having breakfast with my boyfriend, you know normal stuff on your day off, resting, walking…. when someone stopped in front of me and asked “Do you know who I am?”

At the beginning it was quite a shock as I thought I was in trouble when, slowly I started to recognize him… it was not that easy, as when he was in the hospital, many months before he was not on his best shape and at that moment he had changed!

I can’t explain my feelings when I actually realized that the poor guy that spent months lying on the bed on the ward was in front of me looking healthy and happy!

I really felt so pleased for him! It’s weird but at that time as it was a surprised  mix of feelings that included as well grateful and kind of relieved I was seeing him in such a condition!

We sat for a while and caught up!

He was not a patient of my service anymore, so, we exchange numbers so we could talk from time to time.

Next day at work I told to the whole team I saw him and we all were so excited for him! Days passed and just a normal Monday when I was already a bed manager, I went to the outpatient’s service and I saw James again!

We talked for a bit and I told him I was leaving because I asked for a career break.

I mentioned I was going to move for a while to the other part of the world to Columbia.

He wished me the best and one month after that I left the country.

What Happened Next?

So what do you think it happened!?

Eventually I moved to Columbia, and 5 months after my career break started, guess what…

Out of nothing, one random day I received a text from James, he was going to Columbia!

And he was going to the same city I was living in!

I couldn’t believe it, so I asked him to please arrange a day so we could have dinner in Colombia!

That week my boyfriend and I met him in a restaurant…

What can I say it was unbelievable we were at the same time in the other part of the world!

He told me he was feeling much better, he started some new hobbies; he was travelling a lot and started a new job.

He explained how his life changed after all from feeling extremely poorly to be able to live again he was able to value everything much more and how grateful he felt.

It was such a happy shock seeing him feeling that well!

He did continue his trip and adventures as he never had to go through all the hell he passed.

Reflections On The Experience

To be honest all of this made me think a lot about life in general and my job. James was extremely grateful with all the team, and he really though we saved his life, he was able to give me details he remembered, that you as a Nurse do automatically and, actually until he told me this clear how he felt about our job, I didn’t think we can have such an impact on someone.

Things like listening or hold a hand in a bad moment it really makes a change.

He also mentioned like bigger things that happened while he was in hospital and I remembered too but those little details left me without words.

I really loved the way this person went through all of this, his philosophy of life, surviving a cancer obviously changes your life and also the way you approach the rest of it.

Now, James is not going anymore to the hospital and is having the same problems everyone does, what I mean he is not suffering anymore the life threatening ones he used to have.

Conclusion

It was such an inspirational experience, I really hope he keeps doing this well and I hope every Nurse have the chance to see such a progression on a patient because it changes your way of thinking about nursing and life.

As you can see nursing can be as inspirational as this story, and this is real, this sort of things happen and I just feel really lucky have been able to experience something like this.

This is just another of thousands of reasons why I love being a Nurse.

You can see the other reasons why being a Nurse is awesome on nurses.co.uk. I hope you enjoyed this video, have a nice day.