How We Communicate

I am teaching students again and loving every second of it. There is something about seeing the spark in one's eyes when the pieces are connected and watch the growth of a student over time. One of them this week asked me, "What is it like when you have a difficult situation? When you go home does your husband understand?"

This was a great question and I reflected back on some of the emotional moments I carried over the last few months. He always listens and is always there for me to vent about my day or ponder questions of life. He wants to understand but cannot always understand what exactly happened because he is not in healthcare, in the same way I can read his papers about geology and engineering and correct punctuation, but the concepts are way over my head to assess the accuracy of the paper. This is not a fault on either part, it is just an aspect of our occupations that are better understood by those in our field. A group of geologists stayed at our house this week and Caleb was so excited. "They understand me!" he exclaimed. This was no blow to me, but simply the fact that they speak the same language (geology).

I am fortunate that my best friend is a nurse. She gets things on a different level and is a sounding board when things get rough. I can express my feelings, concerns, frustrations, and she speaks nurse. My husband refers to it as "nurse talk" which is inevitable any time we are together.

Nurse talk expands beyond the aftermath of a day into the clinical setting itself. Nurses communicate by action and the way they communicate with their patients. I observed the care of a few ICU nurses recently that touched me. In the ICU nurses are very used to talking to their patients at all times, intubated or not. In observing one nurse care for a patient, she effortlessly spoke to the intubated, sedated patient dictating her care. It struck me as I had forgotten to speak to this patient in the midst of the tubes and lines I was managing. I then watched the husband take her hand and speak to her as if she were alert.

They can hear. They may not be totally aware of surroundings, but they say they can still hear your voice. It was a reminder to slow down in my day and remember to see each and every patient as a person every time.