Welcome to my blog
This is my first blog entry, at least on this website. I had over time made entries on my personal site, blogging about photography, politics, and people. But here I want to share healthcare related information and my experiences bedside.
22 years at bedside has taught me a great deal about Western Medicine and Healthcare, not to be confused with one another. Via this blog, I would like to give you a Nurse’s perspective.
I am sure that if I open up and tell it like it is, that I am going to get a lot of flack along the way. I have heard it said, however, that ‘you get the most flack when you over the target.’ So if I strike a nerve, maybe, just maybe, I have hit upon some truth and that is why it hurts.
Either way, writing is a way to get things off one’s chest, and can be quite therapeutic. It helps to sort out emotions and deal with psychological stress. And as you can probably imagine, not only is there literal trauma, in the all aspects of of nursing, but there is the psychological stress that a nurse must deal with as well, long after a shift it over.
A male Nurse? Yes, traditionally we all think of Nursing as pink collar profession, staffed mostly by women, as of late. But believe it or not, the first Nurses, before there was any such thing as a “Medical Doctor,” were men.
The first Hospitals, in the western world, were formed over 1000 years ago by the Knights Hospitallers, a Catholic Military Order, fighting in the early Crusades, alongside the Knights Templar, and the Knights Teutonic. The healing arts grew out of nursing then were categorized into to pharmacy, to medicine, to surgery and then on to psychiatry, the last of which I have always been a little suspicious.
Over the years, I have seen a lot of death, destruction and mayhem. I started my career in the Emergency Room and have worked in just about every theatre since accept surgery; Cardiac Telemetry, Pre and Post Operative, Radiology, Special Procedure, Cath Lab, Endoscopy Lab, IV Therapy, and Homecare Case Management.
Patients often ask me, “Is that normal.” I simply reply, “I’ve see it all. There is no Normal.”
In 2004 I was actually knighted Sir David Scott Blackwell, Knight of Grace, within the Order of Saint John. God has been good to me. I certainly have made mistakes along the way.
