In Between Skies

I'm at work in the oddest part of a 12 hour shift. I have no one to give report to because I'm carrying my team of patients into the 3-11 part of the day. And I have no one to take report from, having been on the same team since 7am. I had two discharges, but no admissions. No diabetics who need pre prandial finger sticks or insulin coverage. I went and took Jeanette to the bathroom, helped her change, and then we walked up and down the hall a bit. We even made up a new song in French whcih we sang as a round.* But I have nothing new to chart. The floor will stay quiet a while until right after dinner when I begin pulling out my hair giving prns, afternoon doses of lasix and doing the second round of BID (twice a day) dressings.

Some interesting things are coming up at work regarding professional boundaries. I've been asked to be in a Boundaries Awareness Committee. The invitation was partially because I offered my videographer skills (what?) to my superviser to help her... ramp up the orientation package offered to new nurses at our facility. She accepted my offer and then realized that a video on boundaries was a perfect way to begin changing the culture of the entire program to be more open to frank discussions on the subject. Hence, the Boundaries Awareness Committee. The invitation to the committee was, as I mentioned, partially due to my desire to do video production for educational programing. The other half of the inclusion on this project is because of my own experience as a young, new nurse in developing my professional boundaries. This has been an ongoing, trial and error process. Emphasis on the error, because a slippage of boundaries last fall was what spurred my heightened awareness of what constitutes an overstepping.

To begin our work we have decided at our next meeting to take a look at the current boundaries training and what we like or want to change. In the meantime we have been asked to reflect on our own thoughts on professional boundaries in the medical setting.

I should go double check some orders, but expect to hear all about my boundaries disaster of '07 in a future post.




*This brought joy to everyone who could hear us except for the unit secretary who was trying to take an important phone call. If YOU have never sang an improvised round in french with a blind Haitian woman I suggest you try it. It will lower your blood pressure and make you feel like the universe is aligned correctly.