A Nurse Finds Herself on the Other Side of the Equation — as a Patient

HEALING
When a Nurse Turns into a Affected person
By Theresa Brown

When Theresa Brown was identified with breast most cancers, she felt afraid and deeply unhappy on the concept of leaving her kids and not using a mom. The information despatched Brown into such a state of shock and confusion that, to at the present time, she doesn’t bear in mind sharing it together with her husband. However Brown, an oncology and hospice nurse, skilled one thing else too — an uncontrollable anger and occasional urge for violence towards these within the medical system she deemed insufficiently caring and aware of her unlucky circumstances.

In her new memoir, “Therapeutic: When a Nurse Turns into a Affected person,” Brown describes her ire upon realizing {that a} receptionist in a medical workplace had gone residence early, denying her the prospect to schedule a biopsy instantly following an alarming mammogram. Of a second receptionist who offhandedly informed Brown the particular person was gone for the day, she writes, “I needed to punch her within the abdomen and as she doubled over, gasping for breath, smash my fist into the bridge of her nostril. I needed to listen to bone crack. I needed to see blood, have her say NO, beg for mercy.”

The day of Brown’s lumpectomy, somebody on the surgical heart’s entrance desk informed her she was “not on the checklist” of sufferers scheduled for operations that day. The particular person positioned Brown’s title a couple of minutes later, however the inconsiderate comment made Brown seethe. “I confess there is part of me that desires to search out that particular person once more, again her up in opposition to a wall, get proper in her face and bellow within the Nurse Voice, ‘WHAT DO YOU MEAN I’M NOT ON THE LIST?’”

Brown later realized that her bursts of anger stemmed from a helplessness she felt over her illness, a desperation she failed to acknowledge typically sufficient in her personal sufferers within the oncology ward and as a house hospice nurse. That is the disconnect on the coronary heart of “Therapeutic.” A caregiver receiving care abruptly understands an important reality — empathy is important to assuaging struggling. “I had not understood that indifference can develop into a type of cruelty when one’s life might be at stake.” Sadly, Brown writes, “you’ll be able to’t invoice for empathy.”

The American well being care system, wherein every take a look at, examination and drug are separate alternatives for income — and sometimes revenue — affords no tangible incentive for endurance or kindness. We shouldn’t be shocked then that this sort of humanity is all too uncommon in medication. Brown by no means realized the depth of this deficit or how maddening it might be for sufferers till she discovered herself on the opposite aspect.

Brown mines her time as a nurse for insights into the well being care system’s flaws, by no means shying away from her personal shortcomings. In a single unforgettable vignette drawn from her time on employees at a hospital, a 19-year-old most cancers affected person who’s, understandably, cantankerous steps on a chunk of IV detritus Brown had dropped on the ground. She writes, “He was barefoot — ouch — and he swore elaborately.” Desirous to usher the affected person and his scowling mom out of the hospital, Brown doesn’t carry out a dressing change; his mom says she’s going to do it herself at residence, however doesn’t. A nursing supervisor later tells Brown she ought to have famous this within the affected person’s chart. “Fact is,” writes Brown, “I by no means considered it. After they left, I solely needed to be performed with them. I had regarded his anger proper within the face, after which, as quickly as I might, I regarded away.”

In between her searing critiques, Brown affords glimpses of how issues would possibly go if solely medical staff noticed past the duties at hand and had extra time and fewer duties to handle. The cheerful, accommodating employees in a radiation oncology unit made Brown really feel welcome: “They knew the worth of kindness.”

Brown writes that common well being care, improved digital well being record-keeping and a completely nonprofit system are what’s wanted to create area and time for extra compassion in American medication. Nevertheless, at lower than a single web page, Brown’s prescription for enchancment is so transient as to be unconvincing. Whereas her prose is simple to grasp, the multitude and size of the chapters in “Therapeutic” — 39 in all, every two to eight pages — can really feel disjointed. At instances, makes an attempt to be intelligent fall quick. Brown introduces a chapter in regards to the most cancers drug Tamoxifen, for instance, by writing about her father’s love for a Scottish hat referred to as a tam. A chapter explaining how hospices pronounce sufferers useless begins with a meditation on easy methods to pronounce “potato” and “Des Moines.”

Brown, who survived her ordeal, left nursing to write down and provides speeches about well being care full time. Along with her newly acquired 360-degree perspective on medical care, one can’t assist feeling disenchanted that Brown, the nurse, is not strolling the halls of a hospital or dashing from one hospice appointment to the following, able to put her newfound knowledge to work for sufferers. Then once more, even essentially the most well-intentioned well being care staff can solely accomplish that a lot, provided that they’re, Brown writes, caught in a system “targeted on earnings and squeezing each final little bit of effort from employees who solely wish to do good.”