Mailbag: Take a moment this month to recognize nurses
This month we celebrated Nurses Week, a week devoted to honoring the people who are devoted to helping the rest of us. It may not be as big a holiday as Mother’s Day or Father’s Day, but by celebrating the people who help us when we are at our most vulnerable, it is – to me – just as important.
Over the years, the nursing profession has evolved and grown. It has become a more-demanding profession that requires more technical skill and clinical knowledge than ever before. Nursing has started to attract more second-career professionals, and more men are now choosing to become nurses than in previous years.
But with all the changes nursing has undergone, one thing that has remained core to the profession is the nurse’s tireless commitment to others.
Nurses are some of the most trusted people in the nation. For more than a decade, Gallup polls have found that Americans rate nurses’ honesty and ethics highest of all professions. In my own work with nurses at Hoag Hospital, I can understand why.
As more of health care moves out of the hospitals, the cases that do make it into Hoag and other clinical centers are more advanced. That means nurses have more complex caseloads, more dire situations to handle.
More and more, nurses are rising to the challenge by arming themselves with better information. At Hoag, 425 nurses are currently working on earning advanced degrees and many more already hold advanced degrees that help them perform their jobs with more skill and more knowledge.
An Institutes of Medicine report highlights how nursing staffs with higher education levels help improve patient outcomes at hospitals across the nation. And at Hoag our nurses have taken that knowledge to the next level.
This year, for the third time Hoag attained Magnet recognition as part of the American Nurses Credentialing Center’s (ANCC) Magnet Recognition Program, the highest honor an organization can receive for professional nursing practice.
These nurses have created an environment of excellence, where they hold each other to high standards and help inspire the entire institution. Doctors respect them, patients respect them, and their excellent work elevates one another.
Perhaps as a result, more is being asked of them. Already we are seeing an influx of more advanced practice nurses, who are helping to fill in the nation’s physician shortage by running specialized clinics and services. We have also seen the role of the nurse extend to a more holistic approach to health care. Through the Hoag Nurse Navigator program, for instance, nurses do everything from scheduling and managing specialists appointments to answering medical questions to providing personalized follow-up care.
It takes a very special kind of person to be a nurse, one who has a desire to help others and to serve. It’s almost as much a calling as a profession. For all their honesty, integrity and hard work, they ask for very little in return.
Rick Martin
Senior vice president and chief nursing officer, Hoag Hospital.
Newport Beach
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The Beach Ball’s unlikely guest
Re: “So this sea lion walks into a bar ...” (May 20) by Hannah Fry: From the wry title, the clever opening sentence, “ The customer in the sleek brown coat was feeling quite parched ... ,” through the information about the valuable Pacific Marine Mammal Center in Laguna Beach , the entire story made my week . Thank you, Hannah, for the story, and for her obvious empathy with animals.
Al Wonders
Newport Beach
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Reject Patriot Act renewal
Calling it the “Patriot Act” is a blatant attempt to legitimize a completely un-American and un-constitutional regimen of spying on our population by our own government. Shameful doesn’t even begin to describe those who voted for it in the first place, but the word traitor comes much closer. They can wave the flag all they want, but their deeds show that their hearts lean more toward a dictatorship than a democracy.
Alan Remington
Costa Mesa