A favorite saying that stays with me from childhood, and one which I hear ringing in my ears every time I attempt a difficult task, and would be careless and present it in a haphazard fashion is, “shortcut draw blood”. My mother would never allow us to do anything in an abbreviated fashion, “If you a do it, do it well” she insisted. We would be required to do it over, and over, until Mama was satisfied that it was well done.
I try to use this same strategy with my own children who are of another generation, and probably will not understand until they get to adulthood, and have children of their own, who they want to encourage in achieving excellence.
I want to also here advocate that nurses do it well, whether they are doing a basic procedure that they do over and over, is having a bad day at work, spending time with a family whose loved one is taking the last breath, or spending time with a new hire or student who needs to be mentored.
Too often nurses do things the abbreviated way, because they fail to realize that you do not get the same results, when you do not spend the time required to ensure the task in completed well. One’s commitment to excellence is pivotal as a nurse, since what we do is all about saving lives.
Guilty as charged! With the focus being removed from spending time at the bedside, to the need for an increase in the average daily census and an improvement in efficiency in terms of the financial outlook of the institution; the workload has therefore grown exponentially. Nurses are therefore distressed at the tasks they are required to complete in their twelve hour shift.
This I want to remind myself of in my administrative role that I too can help nurses “do it well” by taking the focus back to the patients.
Mama, oh how I wish I could “do it well”.
Pauline;
ReplyDeleteYou make your mother proud by your remembrance of her adage and by passing it along to others. I grew up with the expectation of "doing it right the first time" and if you don't have anything nice to say, don't say anything at all." Maybe some of the issues with incivility in nursing are related to not being able to do things well because of time constraints and not always saying nice things or things nicely.
We all need to work on supporting one another so that we can remain the kind hand, and gentle heart that cares for patients whether they are nice to us or not. In any case we all need to "do it well" always. Lives depend on it.
Hi Pauline,
ReplyDeleteI really like your "do it well" slogan because it is very true that if we do something, we might as well "do it well" the first time. It's just like the fact that when we do things in a rush, we end up wasting more time because we are not going to do things very well if we are rushing.
Frances
Hi Pauline,
ReplyDeleteI think this is a great post! Nurses do tend to take shortcuts; probably because we are always in a rush to get everything done in such a short amount of time! But as your post states - it is better to do it right and do it well, not quickly.
Christie