First, do no harm. It’s Latin and means “first don’t hurt”.
It is a concept that is taught in medical school. Its main purpose is to remind doctors and other medical professionals to consider what interventions may be hindered.
I assume that “intervention” in this sense means medicine.
With that said, I wondered if the nurse missed me in class that day.
I recently asked for surgery. It was never a pleasant concept, yet it was necessary.
My 84-year-old mother insisted that she accompany me on this two-day program. A woman who is always obstinate and stubborn, there is no reason to say what she can and cannot do. Far be it from me to tell her stay at home.
The first day proves to rule certain diseases. The second day was by hand.
Here we find our dilemma: no one was available to pick us up from the hospital. We all knew we were either sick or unable to take two days off from work in just one week.
We did what we had to do. We arranged for a medical transportation service to drop us off at the hospital one day and pick us up the next day. We stayed overnight at cheap motel. We had to use taxis to get from point A to point B. It was the easiest and least expensive way to get things done.
My mother walks with a cane and there was no way she could stay overnight with a suitcase. So we could very well. We threw a few absolute necessities into the bag. Not as heavy as an anvil but not as light as a feather.
Believe me, I’m not mother’s day card ideas lugging around a backpack, but it wasn’t that we had a lot to choose from.
The day of my hand surgery, I was ushered into the anteroom, where this nurse prepared everything I needed, including giving me more stuffing and soothing sheets. I had carelessly left some papers in a bag with my mother who was staying in the country.
So the nurse left to take my mother and the bag (we didn’t realize she could stay with me in the pre-op area).
The first time the nurse came back to the room, she said, “This is serious! You shouldn’t be mourning this thing around!”
“The thing” was the bag and “she” was my mother.
But that’s not the worst. Every time someone entered the room, regardless of who he was or was or was there, this nurse said, “Feel how heavy that bag is!” This comment was made in a very grave and dignified tone, as if he were some horrible person forcing my mother to do something against her will.
It irritated me every time I heard these words of a nurse. The sedative took me away. I didn’t think to answer clearly or quickly enough.
My stress level was pretty close to maximum endurance. And this nurse does not help.
After a while, before being led into the operating room, the nurse said something again, “Feel how heavy that bag is!”
At last I was able to say: “It is me and my mother and we are very well.” This comment was ignored by the nurse and implicated by everyone else.
If I was thinking clearly, I would have told this nurse that it is good walking in shoes Judging a minute before me. In fact, if I had thought clearly, I would have spoken to this nurse at the top of my voice, and then proceeded to complain to whoever it was that I went above her.
It was a humiliating experience that affected me in the waiting room, where I burst into tears for no apparent reason. The stress had finally gotten the best of me, even though the hand was done. Just thinking about my poor mother having traces of that bag and this nurse’s comments was more than enough to torment me and get to my already stressed mind. I was so upset by the whole process that I didn’t even have to explain to the nurse why I was crying.
Aren’t nurses supposed to be compassionate? Didn’t they think it was a gentle aspect of the healing process, let alone have a calming effect before something like traumatic surgery?
has it changed? Do they no longer teach in medical school “First there is no harm”?
Or was this nurse absent from the day that the particular medical ethics was trained? Does he not care so much? Is that a vicious nature?
Like nurses who shouldn’t work in a hospital. The horses must be mucking the stables.
Fortunately, all the other nurses I have met in this experience have been kind and compassionate, and this one nurse will not spoil it.
But she was certainly hurt.
Some courses need updating.
