It was one of the silly cozy afternoon that I was sitting at a certain corner and took the time to stare at a busy paper and at the same time took a deep breath.
The busy paper looks like this: 7-3-11-off-3-3-11-off and so on and so forth... that is how a nurse's schedule works. It was most of the time that our body clock was also affected by the changing shifts but we still manage to take care of other people more than we take care of ourselves.
Being in a nurse's shoe was never easy, you won't get the item or the position you are aspiring for a day or a night after the graduation, regardless if you graduated with honors or you hurdled the board exam with flying colors. It was after the 4 years of nursing school struggle that you still have to be someone better that exerts something more or give most until you have nothing left to give.
A nurse's duty starts with a whole lot of responsibility of separating your personal issues/problems and taking into priority the issues and multi-dimensional problems of your patients. Handle lives of people having different types of condition and different types of level, it was not only the lives of patients under your care but also the lives of each patient's support system. You start the shift knowing, understanding and mastering the condition and the needs of all your patients and what had happened for the previous 24 hours and this involves a tedious organization skills to keep these information inside your head accordingly.
These unbranded heroes makes their rounds and has to have clinical eye or the super power to assess not only what is foreseeable, observable and spoken. It is most of the time, that these unbranded heroes need to capture what is beneath the surface, read between the lines and unfold everything that needs to be unfolded. The nurses starts the day asking other people "how are you?" without even asking themselves first if they are personally fine or not fine, have taken their meals or not, completed six to eight hours of sleep or barely haven't had the chance to take a nap. In lieu with that, they still have to think all of the possible causes and all of the possible effects that could happen and react and intervene with each of these accordingly, and if some of these were out of the line, nurses have no choice but to repeat from the top and start from the first step of asking "why?" /"what's wrong?" /"what happened?" and assessing from head to toe and again figuring out what seems to be the problem that makes the body delineate from the normal zone. More than that, planning on how they're going to intervene and solve each and every problem from person to person like solving a jigsaw puzzle is another task that needs to be met and with that results must always be aligned with their goals and if not, there's no choice for them but to go back to step one and push through with the vision of bringing each and every patient to their normal and healthy zone.
These unbranded heroes are the ordinary people who assumes no room for mistakes because they get scolded even with the slightest mistakes that they commit yet still manage to smile just in time that their patients needs to be fed, needs to be medicated or pampered with care regardless if they are okay or not. These unbranded heroes where the ordinary persons who never had the chance to sit even if their knees are tired going back and forth the hall. They don't even have the chance to take their meal just to have each patient's medication/food be given on time.
These unbranded heroes are the ordinary people who gives the best interest in favor of their patients, sometimes have to take an extra 8 hours for another shift if the circumstances requires them to do so without even complaining and asking "why?", holds their patient's hands, lends an ear or a shoulder to lean on, carries half or even whole of the unit's burden and gives enough strength and takes part in everyday miracles even if it means not having the complete 8 hours of sleep, skipping a meal or a comfort room break, not having the right amount of salary they deserve not only with their degree but with the extent of their job description, not being able to attend a family dinner, not being able to celebrate holidays and events with their family. These were some of the things that were often disregarded by the nurses in exchange for a holistic and quality care given to other people and yet at the end of the day still being questioned.
We are one of the few persons, who gives extra effort, walks an extra mile and gives more than what we can offer until we are left empty handed yet most of the time neglected and remains to be unbranded.
