Happy Nurses Week to All our CMHA WW Nurses!

Happy Nurses week to our incredible nurses at CMHA WW! Thank you for all of your hard work! Nursing Week is a time to recognize the year-round dedication and achievements of Registered Nurses (RNs), Registered Practical Nurses (RPNs) and Nurse Practitioners (NPs), and to increase awareness of their contributions to the well-being of Canadians. This year, Nursing Week runs from May 6 to May 12.

In celebration of Nurses Week, Daniel Cook, RPN with FACTT wrote about his experience as a nurse:

Nursing is an ever changing profession that likely has the most variability out of any job in the entire world. The one key element to every job that is done by a nurse, is caring for people to the best of your ability. If you go to school to be a plumber, than if you start your own business or work for a company, no matter where you go, likely the job will be more or less the same. As a nurse, the scope of what you are entitled to do is so broad, which makes the job always exciting! It is essentially a license to acquire a multitude of different jobs within the profession.

I started nursing back in 2009, and had graduated from Conestoga College’s practical nursing program. My first job was working in Fort McMurray’s hospital in the inpatient medicine program. My college education was very exciting and challenging at times, but I never anticipated the amount of love and compassion I would feel from my co-workers until I actually graduated and started working on my own. My team in Fort McMurray was very close, and I remain friends with them still too this day. This isn’t unique to just this place, but all workplaces I have entered as a nurse. It can be a challenging job, but, I have always had the support of my nursing colleagues with every job I’ve had.

I believe this is one of the things that makes working as a nurse so special, is that it attracts a certain type of person who is generally fairly flexible, organized, good critical thinking skills. When you work on a team with other nurses who have the same mind set as you, it’s an extremely special experience that makes the job experience so rewarding!

Eventually I moved on to my true passion, which is Psychiatric nursing. Psychiatric nursing is in my mind, the most truly holistic modality of nursing. When I worked in any of the areas within medical model, we treat conditions which affect people. For instance, I would help someone recover from having their appendix removed, and that is it. With psychiatry we must consider the person as a whole. Their illness, housing, family, finances, work life, background. For the first time in my nursing I felt like it wasn’t treating illness affecting people, but instead treating people affected with illness.

My work at CMHA has been very informative, rewarding, and challenging. It was the first time that I worked on a team that didn’t consist of mostly nurses, but instead a true multi-disciplinary team with near even spilt of a multitude of different professions. I feel the love that people show to one another in CMHA is a very similar experience to the love shown amongst a nursing team. I am appreciative of all the respect shown to nurses during nursing week, and I would just like to show my love back to all the fantastic nurses I have had the pleasure of working with. I would especially like to show my appreciation to all the clients I have the pleasure to work with now, and have previously worked with. To me, you have not only made my work life enjoyable, but a true passion where I look forward to going to work every day. Thank you everyone for everything you do!