About two weeks ago I took my son Taz to chess class. He was attending chess class every couple nights. I took him to chess class, and as we were sitting there waiting for the class to start, this was in a big community center, you know the kind where they have multiple classes, they have a gym, and they have all these different things going on, so I’m sitting in the class, waiting for it to start, and the doors are open, so everybody walking by can see. As we’re sitting there, this little, maybe one-year-old who had just begun to walk, and was just learning to talk, ran into the room as fast as he could stumbling into the room, and pointed right over my head and started saying, “Clock, clock.”
His mom comes in behind him, and grabs him, and tries to pull him out, and he just … he won’t stop staring, and just pointing at the, “Clock, clock, clock.” The mom takes him out of the room, and the whole time as they’re leaving I hear him yelling still, “Clock, clock,” and pointing at the clock. He was ecstatic, he was so excited, he was so proud of himself for seeing a clock.
Now what does that have to do with nursing, and why am I sharing that with you? As I watched him, the first thought that came to my mind is how quickly we lose fascination, and excitement for things that once brought us so much excitement and fascination. How does that apply to nursing? Well, nursing is one of the most wonderful, amazing, fulfilling, incredible things that we can do with our lives. With nursing, you have the ability to touch people in their darkest moments, in their most stressful moments, and give them a small piece of light.
With nursing, you have the ability to learn about the human body, to fix the human body, to see the human body heal, to see the death process up close and personal, to see life come into the world, and touch new life. You have the ability to be the most important person to somebody. You have the ability to save lives, to literally save lives.
What an amazing career. I know that we all know that. I know all of us in the NRSNG family know that. I know deep down we know the magnitude, and the wonder that is being a nurse, but here’s what happens, I’m afraid that we lose the wonder for nursing. You know those of you who are experienced nurses, or those of you who are maybe fourth year nurses, or brand new nurses might have forgotten the excitement, and the joy, and the feelings that you had the first time you started an IV. I can remember practicing doing IVs. I would go up to the sim center all the time in nursing school, and I can’t remember what semester it was, but I remember going up to the sim center and practicing on those rubber arms that you practice on, and then we got to practice on each other, and then I got to do one in the clinical floor.
I remember, like that was everything to me. That was everything to me. Starting an IV was everything to me. I was like that little baby, “IV, IV, IV.” That’s all I could talk about was that I started an IV, and I got, and I was able to start the fluids on the patient. But as time progressed, IVs became nothing to me, right? I would do multiple IVs a night. I would start IVs in stressful situations.
That’s fine, part of that is fine as our skills progress, it’s good for us to also progress, and to move on, but what I don’t want you to lose is that wonder for nursing. The wonder for how amazing this career is, for how amazing it is that you’re doing this. I know in nursing school, especially, it can become very possible to lose that wonder, to feel like this isn’t worth it, to lose that passion, because you’re right now, you probably feel like you’re drowning. You probably feel like you’re drowning in paper work, like you’re drowning in NCLEX prep, like you’re drowning in prep for nursing school as we approach the summer, but don’t let all of that beat you down to a point that you lose the wonder altogether. Don’t let that tear you down to a point that you lose the passion for being a nurse.
I know saying that is one thing and living it is another thing. You guys that is what we want to embrace, and to embody as an NRSNG family is this love, and this passion, and this community, and more than that, that’s what NRSNG as a company, as employees that work with me, and that work to build tools, and things for you, that’s what we want to embrace. We want you to be able to keep that passion for being a nurse. The way that we’re doing that is with the new NRSNG Academy that’s coming in July of 2018.
We want to extract out of your life that stress, that overwhelm, that needless time spent searching through all these resources. We’ve built, literally from the ground up, the most advanced education platform for nurses available. This is coming in July 2018, and I believe that it is going to be the only tool you need to use to study during nursing school. The reason we wanted to make it so immensely simple to use, and so tremendously powerful, packed with algorithms, and proprietary teaching methods, and so much is because I want you to just be able to sit down, and study, and master content.
We’ve called this new method of teaching, the core content mastery method, and that’s what the whole new NRSNG Academy is built around. We haven’t used blanket website builders, we haven’t used blanket content creation, we’ve built this entire thing, redone from the ground up. This is an entirely custom built website, and platform for you to be able to sit down, and not think about what you need to do. You guys, nursing is the most incredible thing that we can do. Being a nurse has literally changed my life in so many ways, from the way that I view life, from the things that I make important, and from the way that I talk to people, it’s changed me tremendously.
The times I lose that wonder, and I lose that sense of amazement and awe as well, and I just want this podcast, this post to be a quick reminder of how incredible being a nurse truly is. We love you guys. Thank you so much for being part of the NRSNG family. You guys, go out, and be your best self today. Happy nursing.