Is Nursing In Your DNA?

I have pondered this question a lot recently: is nursing is in one’s DNA?

I’ve come to the conclusion that it really is.

When you look at an acorn, you realize that it has the DNA to become an oak tree.  It cannot become anything else; it has no choice but to become a leafy giant if all goes well in its growth.  Plant an acorn, give it the nutrients of the soil, quench its thirst with water and eventually it will grow to its fullest expression of being an oak.

The same is true of nurses.

If we are given the right education in the right environment, we will grow to our fullest potential as a nurse.  This is a unique process called “entelechy.” It is the realization of potential.  It is the supposed vital principle that guides the development and functioning an organism or a system of organization.  Or, if you will, the soul.

Nursing is in your DNA because I believe you cannot pay people any amount of money to do some of the things that nurses do.  They deal with every bodily fluid known to man and every organism, both known and unknown as of yet.

We are the heart and soul of patient care.  We are healers, givers and providers.

I wonder what happens when an oak tree doesn’t want any longer to be an oak?  When a nurse no longer wants to be a nurse, it is hard for that person to find a place where they can realize their fullest expression of themselves.

The reason I practice law like nursing is because I do not know of another way.  Therefore, it is paramount that we shift the way nursing is practiced so that we can practice nursing the way it is meant to be practiced.  By providing safe, effective patient care including psychosocial support and not just going from task to task, where we are valued and appreciated for our contributions to the health care team and where are voices can be heard and our suggestions to improve patient care are listened to and implemented.  Like the oak tree, this was we can become the fullest expression of ourselves as a nurse.