The Qualities of a Good Nurse
A doctor once listed the qualities of a good nurse. He said that compassion, empathy, kindness, tolerance, strength, intelligence, bravery, and stamina are all qualities of a good nurse. A nurse then added: a sense of humor.
Empathic people can feel the suffering of others. Compassionate people feel the suffering but also wish to help the people who are suffering. These are basic qualities of a good nurse. A good nurse must be able to understand the suffering of her patients and want to help relieve that suffering. Someone who does not possess those feelings will not make a good nurse.
Kindness is related, usually considered to mean a kind of pleasantness and concern for others. Empathic and compassionate people are kind. Again, a person who is not kind would not make a good nurse.
Tolerance is a very different but essential quality. As a nurse, you must be tolerant of the idiosyncrasies as well as the larger defects of personality you may see in your patients or in other people. That does not mean you tolerate incompetence or allow your patients to be put in danger. It means that you do not judge people. If you are taking care of a sick patient, you cannot withhold care because you disapprove of something about him. Of course you are entitled to your opinion, and can express it freely outside of work. But if you don't think you can take care of any type of patient, you should consider if nursing is the right job for you.
Nurses need strength of character, but they also need physical strength and stamina. Nursing is hard physical work. It takes a lot out of you. If you don't think you can stay on your feet running from place to place, lifting patients, bathing patients, and anything else you might need to do, you have to think if nursing is the profession for you. Of course, physical strength and stamina is most important for a young nurse, who will have to do all those things. If you continue your education and try and advance your career, by the time you are older, you may be an administrator or nurse educator and need less actual physical strength.
Intelligence should not need to be explained. Maybe some people think that nurses are not as intelligent as say, doctors. Nothing could be further from the truth. Nurses have to figure out what doctor's mean, even if they didn’t write it down or they wrote it down but it isn't legible. Nurses see patients over much longer periods of time than doctors, and they need to find out the things that might otherwise be missed. They need to know when to call for help. They need to know how to talk to families. Nurses must be smart.
Bravery in this context means that nurses are willing to do things and face situations that most people will not face. That might mean helping do surgery with your hands inside a patient. It might mean cleaning up vomit and feces. It might mean telling someone their husband, wife, or child has died. It might mean telling someone they have cancer. Yes, the doctor will also do that, but what people don’t remember afterwards, the nurse will have to fill in.
The nurse that added a sense of humor to this list did so because you can't get through all the things just mentioned without a sense of humor. You have to find some humor in dealing with difficult and demanding patients, as well as doctors. If you have to clean up vomit, it's better to be able to laugh at it. If you have been tolerant all day, you should be able to let go at home and tell all the jokes you want.
The best nurses are all the ones who chose to be nurses.
Published: 2009-10-14
