Sunday, January 29, 2017

Not My Place to Judge

Working in the ER one encounters many types of people. Young, old, middle-aged, kids, black, white, male, female, Asian, Caucasian, Hispanic, Vietnamese...and the list goes on. Then you encounter all kinds of chief complaints: belly pain, sore throat, back pain, chest pain, headache, weakness, fatigue, nausea, vomiting, lacerations, broken bones, etc...again the list goes on. One encounters different attitudes in people: kind, angry, calm, anxious, expectant, worried, scared, mean, delusional, egotistic, respectful, rude, polite, etc...

All these and many more combined to bring in every type of patient imaginable from every type of background you could picture. There's no rhyme or reason to what bring any person in on any given day, but as a nurse I expect diversity. I expect to care for different types of people who come from different walks of life. This doesn't bother me. Rather, it is exciting to learn about different people and it is a challenge to meet each person where they are, help them understand their course of treatment, gain their trust, and assist in their healing. 

Who they are and where they come from doesn't really matter. What matters is caring for them to the best of my ability and knowing enough about where they come from to care for them with cultural competence and respect.

Then there are the patients who comes from jail, who caused the accident, who drank too much before getting behind the wheel, and who comes with a story. A story that is relevant to the mechanism of injury, a story that explains why police are there holding a ticket, a story that sometimes makes the providers shutter and judge. 

I had a patient with a story. This story was similar to many I had heard before and I didn't think twice about it. Injuries were significant and I diligently managed pain, comforted, and reassured. Police showed up hours later with a different story. A story that painted a new picture of the patient, a story that better explained the injuries as well as how the decision impacted others. 

My heart broke.  It didn't change my care for this patient, but boy was it a struggle in my brain not to judge. And it is so very easy to judge when in my line of work we see the impact of decisions every day. 

How would this had played out if I never knew that story? Probably in my mind a complicated case I had the privilege of being a part of...and what was it now? In that moment I judged and I struggled with the facts of the event. And now reflecting on it...

Still a complicated case, and still one I feel privileged to be a part of. Why? Because I had the opportunity to treat this patient the same as I would treat any other patient. I had the opportunity to show compassion and grace in a time where it would have been easy to tell that patient to deal with the consequences. We all make mistakes in life. Some that affect the lives of others and some that stay hidden behind the doors of our homes. At the end of the day is there a difference? We all struggle with different things, but not all those result in physical damage. 

If I made a mistake that landed me in the ER with a story, I hope I would receive compassion and the benefit of the doubt. Maybe I would deserve it, maybe I wouldn't...but whose place is it to judge?

Not mine, I remind myself each day, not mine. 
 

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