When Caring Becomes the Care - A Short Story of My Experience with Pediatric ICU
I have been a nurse for many years. I’ve read the literature, attended the in-services, and participated in countless rounds and safety huddles. But nothing prepared me for how my understanding of caring would shift when I found myself, still holding my identity as a nurse, but in that situation, a parent, holding my six-month-old son in a hospital bed. He had a respiratory virus. It started like any other cold, but something in my gut told me things were changing. My partner and I—both nurses—knew better than to wait. We took him to the hospital. The moment we stepped through the emergency department doors, we moved from being clinicians to being just another frightened family trying to make sense of a system we thought we knew. The Missing Pieces of Care At first, the care was clinically appropriate. People came and went. Vital signs were taken. Assessments were done. But no one told us who they were. No one explained what they were doing or why. I had never realized how vu...