Angels Among us – Last Weeks post Last week I shared a story of angels that has walked with me through my years in mental health nursing. That was not all of them – but the ones that caught my attention the most. The response I received from that one post was heart warming. I […]

As a nursing student, I was required to read and study Elizabeth Kubler-Ross’s famous work on death and dying. In fact, it is such an important and accepted work in the medical community that several questions regarding it were included on my state board exams. The five stages of grief (denial, anger, bargaining, depression and acceptance) outline the process that all humans go through during grief, trauma or difficult changes in their lives.

Humor gives us the ability to keep bouncing back: in the face of increasing workloads and dwindling resources; when we’re asked to do the impossible on a regular basis;

Night Shift seems to bring things out of the dark corners…or does it? Sitting on the front porch of a 155 year old building looking out across the manicured lawn – where a time capsule is buried in the front circle for the next generation to discover. I sit and wonder what it must have

The American Psychiatric Association publishes the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM IV for short). It is an amazing and interesting publication which lists every psychiatric and personality disorder known and unknown.

Where is the support for the nurse? When I started nursing school 1986 I had no idea what I was really getting into. I just wanted to be able to have a job that traveled any where I wanted to live. No one told me what I would experience would be left up to me

Over the last few weeks I have ask nurses of all branches of service to fill out the survey to give them a voice and hear what makes them go back to the job when the shift before was a nightmare. Not one nurse said she did not care any more. They wanted to be able to care more.