The Heart

1. Respect was extremely important, and this was easy during my training in the United Kingdom, as patients were all addressed by either Mr. or Mrs. followed by their last names, except for children and teenagers.
    
2. Knowing more about each patient beyond what was written with a diagnosis, allowed me to build strong patient-nurse relationships. This approach opened a communication door that patients used frequently to talk about themselves, family, pets or occupation. Here is a good example: a patient opened her bedside table drawer, withdrew several photographs and handed them to me to have a look. Her face lit up with joy as she began describing each of her beautiful 6 horses, and we chatted a bit about care and training.
    
3. I had a male patient who went on a tree to cut down a large branch, it bounced back and knocked him off cutting an arm at a bad angle: he was in a lot of pain during dressing change, and there were times I had to suppress my tears, as I felt his pain, but empathy overflowed using conversational distraction on topics he had previously shared. The senior nurse and I cheered on discharge day, when he left the ward with just an arm sling.