I recently went back and read an interview I did with the Journal of Emergency Nursing in 2022, “Pediatric Resiliency in the Face of Disaster.” Reading it four years later reminded me that while my roles have changed and my opportunities to serve have grown, the reason I do this work really has not.
It comes back to the patient.
In that interview, I talked about children I had cared for during disaster responses, children drawing superheroes with chalk, girls signing each other’s clothes with “BFF,” children finding ways to play and create some sense of normalcy in circumstances that were anything but normal.
I also talked about something that I still believe strongly today: we have the power to create fear, but we also have the power to alleviate it.
That is especially true in the emergency department.
Our patients may not remember every medication we administered or every clinical decision we made. But they often remember whether we looked at them, listened to them, reassured them, protected their dignity, or took an extra minute to make an overwhelming situation a little less frightening.
One of the questions I was asked in that interview was what I would say to a patient during a disaster. My answer was simple:
“What can I do for you?”
Not, “What happened to you?”
Not, “What do you need medically?”
Just, “What can I do for you?”
Because sometimes the thing that matters most in that moment is recognizing the person in front of us as an individual.
That philosophy has followed me throughout my career, and it is also part of why my commitment to the Emergency Nurses Association means so much to me.
When this interview was published in 2022, I was already a proud Lifetime ENA member and a reviewer for the Journal of Emergency Nursing. Today, I have the privilege of serving as Disaster Section Editor for JEN and continuing to contribute to the organization and profession in new ways.
To me, these aren’t separate pieces of my career.
Serving ENA means serving emergency nurses. And supporting emergency nurses ultimately means improving the care we provide to the people who come through our doors on what may be one of the worst days of their lives.
That is the connection I never want us to lose.
As I run for the ENA Board of Directors, I want members to know that my commitment to ENA did not begin with an election, and it will not end with one.
I have invested in this organization because I believe in emergency nursing. I believe in advancing our science and scholarship. I believe in preparing nurses for disasters and everyday emergencies alike. I believe in supporting the nurses doing this incredibly difficult work.
But most importantly, I believe we can never become so focused on systems, policies, metrics, and operations that we forget the human being sitting on the stretcher in front of us.
Four years later, I would still answer that interview question exactly the same way:
What can I do for you?
That is the kind of emergency nurse I have tried to be.
That is the kind of leader I try to be.
And that is the perspective I would be honored to bring to the ENA Board of Directors.
If you are an ENA member, I would be honored to earn your vote.