Nursing is a work of heart.

Yes, we use science to do our jobs; we use math; we use our hands; we use our backs; we analyze, consider, judge, assess, plan, and prepare. We use our feet and our voices. We use our entire being to do our jobs; however, the thing that keeps us in it and keeps us giving to our patients and caregiving team, is our hearts.

This is the week that we celebrate love: romantic love, friend love, family love. While we are celebrating the love inside of our relationships, we can also celebrate the love that we have for nursing.

In a time when we are not celebrating nursing, a time when we are being used and abused at the bedside, we can still recognize our love for being a nurse. Nurses are still giving care MIRACULOUSLY UNCONDITIONALLY. We will care for our patients even when we get yelled at by those same patients. When we are given too many patients with no help, we still care. We dig down deep and find the love for the role we have. We aren’t mushy-gushy “in-love” with our patients or the job, we are showing love by taking care of patients to the best of our ability at a time when we have no support (low staff, high census, disappearing leaders, etc.).

That’s the picture if you can still find that love for nursing inside yourself. What if you can’t find that love, Nurse? What if continuing to be a nurse is the last thing you want to do? What then?

There isn’t anything wrong with that. There isn’t something wrong with you if you have lost that “lovin feeling” for this career you chose once upon a time. Nursing is not like a relationship, in that loving it is a choice you make every day, even on the days you don’t want to. If you have lost the deep down love for caring for others, then it is time to find something else to do. Maybe you don’t need to leave the profession all together. Maybe you can still do something with your license that will still have you working in the career without having the conditions that make you unable to find love, compassion, decency for your patients.

What else can you do that will make that love for nursing re-bloom? What water can you give to your dry nurse’s soul?

• leave the bedside, work in a clinic

• leave the bedside, work in case management, utilization review, IT

• become a consultant

• public speaker

• blogger

• wellness coach

• home health, hospice, or visiting nurse

• RN writer

You get the point. There are so many things you can do as a licensed nurse that do not require you to be mistreated at the bedside where you loath going to work.

I love being a nurse.

I don’t love my job.

I don’t love the current healthcare situation.

What are you going to do? What am I going to do? Click the button and let me know what you are pursuing for your nurse’s soul. Perhaps nurses supporting nurses is the ultimate in love.