My friend Alyson now works in a Day Surgery Department, and she runs it with a ruling hand, everything is done correctly, and she is as hyperactive as she has always been – the patients love her.

The first few years I worked with Alyson, we worked together on a medical unit that had many cardiac patients. Alyson was a relatively new graduate and was doing everything by the book. She is built strong – in body, mind, and soul. This was a nurse who knew the Cardiac Routine as well as she knew her signature, and she would get her patients to comply no matter what. If they wanted to get well they had better listen to her; she was their nurse, and she told them so. She was always lecturing them about crossing their legs and always telling them to take their arms down from behind their head to lessen the load on the heart. Yes, she was and is a good nurse, and I would put my life in her hands any day. She does her work well and is admired for it.

Sometime during our first year together we had a man who had been admitted with a heart attack, a rather severe one at that. But he was a hard-driving businessman, who did not stop asking for a telephone (something the cardiac patients are not allowed), and he wanted more salt; he wanted to go home; and he would not admit to having pain. One day he crossed the line. This had gone on long enough for Nurse Alyson. She jumped up and headed for his room and closed the door. We could hear voices, loud at first, then at a more reasonable level. Then strangely enough, after that we had a compliant patient.

The doctor arrived the next day to make his rounds. He emerged from this gentleman's room laughing. He could hardly tell us why because he laughed so much.

Finally he said that the patient had asked him, "Who is that nurse out there who is built like a Green Bay Packer and thinks she's Hitler?"


Bonnie Jarvis-Lowe,RN.Rtd.

BACK TO BONNIES PAGE

HOME

MGM