Any thoughts or comments? Nursing: A grueling, demanding job high in demand

Tommy Hawkins didn't begin his working life in nursing, but he knew it's where he wanted to be.

After being laid off from a sales job where he said, "I'd wake up and didn't want to go to work," he knew he wanted to get into medicine. So with his wife working to support them, Hawkins went back to school to study nursing. After two years with Atrium Medical Center, he's never looked back. "I found my niche," the ER nurse said.

Nursing is one of the only job sectors that is still growing rapidly. In Ohio alone, jobs in health care have increased 22.3 percent to 151,200 within the last year. Another 587,000 nursing positions are expected to be added by 2016, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics.

But it's not for everyone. It's a job that requires math and science skills, the ability to work as a team member, to keep an open mind, to prioritize and respond rapidly to changing situations. And more than anything, it requires compassion.

Several area nurses gave us the opportunity to walk a mile in their scrubs to find out what the job is really like.

Lesson one: What you see on TV is nothing close to reality. There is no Dr. Gregory House or Dr. John Carter sweeping through the hospital halls, single-handedly saving the day.

Rather, the star of this reality show is teamwork, a group of nurses, doctors and technicians who collectively work on every patient, who depend on each other like a life raft for 12-hour shifts each day to do their part to get the job done.

"It's a group effort. You don't have time to think of the miracles you helped create today until after it's all done," said Teresa McGuire, an obstetrics nurse at the Family Birth Center at Atrium.

It's that effort that amazed her when her own daughter needed an emergency cesarean section.

"It was unbelievable the number of people who came out of the woodwork and donned scrubs, no questions asked," she said. "It brings me to tears. But this is how it is, everyone, everyday. It's incredible."

A team is how you deal with a waiting room full of flu patients, a gunshot wound, a kid with a toothache and a woman in cardiac arrest all in one afternoon, Hawkins said.

Working as a team also means you always have to be available, which is where the prioritizing comes in, said Lisa Stanger, a charge nurse on the medical unit floor at The Fort Hamilton Hospital.

"You start an IV but then someone needs you to check on a patient and then the doctor is on the line with a question," she said.

Stanger's day begins with a report from the night charge nurse about the conditions of every patient on the floor. Then it's off for a physical assessment of her assigned patients — usually five a day — followed by checking what medicines and tests are needed, what forms need to be signed and confirming a patient hasn't had anything to eat or drink if they need surgery. There are patients to bathe, pillows to fluff, IVs to change, and hands that need to be held. She's getting discharge papers and making calls to ensure that whoever is taking care of patients on the homefront is prepared. There for three meals a day, she's also opening containers and cutting up food, making sure everyone eats.

It's a grueling, demanding job. Most of the 12-hour shift Stanger spends on her feet, grabbing lunch whenever she can and eating it on the floor.

That's because the patents always come first. Even when she's off work, she still calls to check in on a patient, or stops by for a visit to make sure they're doing OK.

"I'm an active person and I don't like desk work," she said. "I like to be by the bedside.

Sometimes the hardest part of the job is what makes it amazing, said Stephanie Nichols, an obstetrics nurse at the Family Birth Center at Atrium.
"Learning how to deliver a baby with the doctor was one of the most challenging experiences," she said. "You never want to do it, but it's just so amazing to help the baby come out, I can't describe it."

Since the nurse is the only one with the patient from the beginning of labor through birth, Nichols said she has to know everything.

"You're the one with the patient through all the pushing. It's not a two-minute ordeal, it's a two- to three-hour ordeal or more, and you're the one there, not the doctor."

Much of the time is spent swabbing brows, checking vitals and squeezing hands.

"We don't just play patty-cake and rock babies," she said. "That's what their mommies are for."

And Nichols is always wary of a full moon. Everyone is in labor, with the last full moon seeing seven patients admitted in less than two hours.

"It's always stressful because you never know what you've got until you go home and you can talk about it," she said.

But just like any job, it has its ups and downs. It's the nature of the beast to get immersed in a patient's pain.

"The hardest part is having a mother come in with the expectation of a wonderful and beautiful delivery and it doesn't come out that way," McGuire said. "And it's not just the mom, it's the dad, it's the siblings, it's the grandparents. You cry with them and just give up yourself to trying to get them through."

And as a nurse on the front lines of patient care, you have to console and heal people who have undergone things so horrible "you wouldn't even think it happens in our society," Hawkins said.

"It's hard but you aren't working on a car. These are human beings and they have concerns and need to be comforted and talked through what has happened," he said.

The biggest thanks is rarely a spoken word or gesture. It's why so many nurses cherish the few they get: a bag of home-grown jalapeños, the hug at the grocery store, a phone call. Rather the reward is seeing someone able to go home better than when they came in.

For Stanger, it's what you give more than what you get.

"In this economy there are a lot of people just looking for a job. You have to have heart and be able to give everything," she said.