Images of the Perfect Nurse by Tammy Pursley, RN

I started out like the others.  I entered nursing school with bright eyes and high ideals, naive to the ways of the real world of nursing.  I knew I was going to be different.  I would do all my charting immediately after giving care.  My patients would be turned every two hours, on the dot.  My meds would be given exactly on time.  I would be the perfect nurse.

Well, I’ve been a nurse for over two years, and the honeymoon is over.  In my disenchantment phase, I believed that the perfect nurse existed only in the minds of humorless, dictatorial nursing school instructors.

Of course, that is not true.  Because eveyone has a definition of the “perfect nurse”.  It just means different things to different people.  For example: (more…)