be nice to your nurse

You know what the worst part of my job is?

Its not dealing with poop.

Its not dealing with vomit.

Its not dealing with blood.

Its not even watching somebody die.


It is dealing with mean people. There are a fair amount of mean people in the world. You find that out in a job like mine. There are people who will treat you like shit just because you happen to be there. You are the subject of their frustration, bad life, anger problem.

Here's the thing: All of us who work in the ER are human. We have feelings too, believe it or not. We aren't robots. When someone attacks us, it hurts. Yup, even after years of being an ER nurse, I can be made to feel bad. It angers us. We want to attack them right back. We can't.

So we stuff it inside ourselves and move on to the next person. But we don't forget it. We wonder why we were treated like that. We were just trying to do our job. A lot of people would say, let it go, that person was just a jerk. Or they were under stress. Sometimes its not so easy to let it go.

This is the kind of stuff that makes you wonder, why do I do this job? It really is a self abusive job. This kind of stuff happens all the time. Its not rare. Its the kind of stuff that makes nurses quit the profession.

Treat your nurse nice.