Nurses Who Care

The Nurse Behind “The Godfather”

Admin — Tue, 08 May 2012 19:17:32 +0000

An Interview of Carol by Scrubs • April 27, 2012

Best-selling author Carol Gino, RN, talks to Scrubs about the art of healing, following her intuition and spending 20 years with the Godfather of Mafia tales, Mario Puzo.

Some young girls grow up with visions of becoming the next Florence Nightingale but you had an actual vision of Florence Nightingale that prompted you to go into nursing. Tell me about that. I was just 21,with two little kids and a husband with a drinking problem. We had just moved to Pennsylvania and he took off with the car that had the diapers and food in it. I didn’t even have a telephone. That’s the night I saw the vision of Florence Nightingale—which of course I didn’t know was a vision.

And you didn’t know it was Florence Nightingale, either?

No clue at all. There was this woman with ringlets, her hair pulled up on her head, she had a ratty cape on and she was holding this strange lamp, checking out the baseboard and I kept saying, “excuse me ma’am, excuse me,” then I poked myself to see if I was awake. The next morning, I found a phone and I called my father and said, “I want to come home I’ve decided I want to be nurse.”

You’ve written a lot about heeding your intuition, has yours always been strong?

From the time I was a little kid I always had this voice that would help me through the really tough times. So many of the things that were my greatest satisfaction, the biggest moments in my life were things that I had to go on intuition with, I had to trust myself that it was the truth. I’m sure every one of us has those voices that sound like whispers, those little tugs, I just learned to trust them.

I know your grandmother was a nurse and midwife, do you think her career influenced yours?

You know it’s really hard to tell, but she was my favorite person in the whole world because she was so authentic. We lived with her until I was seven years old and I remember from the time I was a little bitty kid she would tell me all these stories. She drove a car, carried a gun, was divorced, she was a midwife, she spoke different languages and she was so real and she allowed me to be so real. I think she was buried in my subconscious for a long, long time.

You’ve said that she helped shape your fascination with death, why is that?

At that time they didn’t let you see anybody who had died, and she just disappeared. But before she went into the hospital she called me into her room and I remember her rolling up those silly stockings and she had this pink satin slip on and she said, “I have to go away, I have to have an operation.” She took my hand and put it on her breast and she said. “I have a lump and I won’t be able to come back. But I want you to remember that I love you and I want you to be kind to everyone you can, but enjoy your life and have a good time. Don’t hurt others unnecessarily but don’t hurt yourself either.” She never came home from the hospital, she hemorrhaged on the table. But boy was I mad. She died and she died on me. I think I didn’t realize any of this until after I got married and divorced and I suffered my next big loss.

And nursing helped you handle that loss?

I felt like such a terrible failure when my marriage ended. I don’t think Italians know what a drinking problem is, either because it isn’t prevalent or because they drink and fall asleep or they eat so much that they never get that wacky. So I didn’t have a clue. Nursing saved me. You can’t think badly of yourself if so many people are telling you how special you are to them. Healing others can help heal yourself.

In Then An Angel Came, you wrote movingly about the impact of losing your grandchild to Sudden Infant Death Syndrome. How were you able to get through that?

Nursing is boot camp for life. I always said anyone of my patients could have been my mother, my father, my children, or me, so when my grandson died the feeling of grief was familiar and I thought, oh my God I really was legit, my patients meant an awful lot to me. Of course, when I said that to my daughter she said, “Mom don’t you think you should be telling that to someone other than me?” What can I tell ya, I’m a flawed human being.

You seem to be a blend of traditional Italian with a strong streak of the unconventional. How does that work?

One time I told a therapist that I felt like I walk around in one body but I’m Siamese twins. I’m traditional, but at the same time, like Mario said, “you’ve got some crazy beliefs but you’re the most the competent person I know.” I said, “Competent, that’s suppose to be sexy?” And he said, “You have no clue how sexy competent is for a man.”

Mario, of course is Mario Puzo, the author of the Godfather, who also co-wrote the movies (and won a couple of Academy Awards for the screenplays). You met him through nursing too, didn’t you?

I had taken care of his wife, Erika, while she was dying—very cliché, I know. She really was a wonderful, wonderful woman and they are a wonderful family. After she died, I showed Mario some of my writing and he said, you really should write a book, people should know how important nurses are to families, and how much more important they are to help families get through this kind of stuff than doctors.

So, you had a pretty good mentor for your writing career, what was that like?

It was like being an apprentice to one of the great masters.

How did the trajectory of your life change after you met Mario?

My external life was completely different. I got to see the beauty the world has to offer which was really nice. With Mario we would eat in the finest restaurants and stay in 5-star hotels around the world. But it’s funny, we could be in Malibu or Cannes, meeting directors or actors and he’d always introduce me by saying, “This is my girlfriend Carol, she’s a nurse.”

You spent 20 years with Mario Puzo, why didn’t you ever marry?

The only time I wanted to get married was when he was sick so I could make decisions if he went to the hospital. Mario used to say, “I’ll marry you when I want to get rid of you because you always leave your husbands.” My two marriages and the other relationships I had—all those years added up didn’t last as long as the time I spent with Mario. As you so adeptly picked up, there’s a part of me that’s very, very traditional, and we could relate on that level and at the same time he would always encourage me to make decisions that were good for me.

How was it finishing The Family, the book about the Borgias that Mario had worked on—but hadn’t completed—before he died?

It was lovely. When he was researching his books, we traveled to the Catacombs, the Vatican I got history in living color. For 15 years or 20 years we talked about the damn Borgias, so when I was finishing what we had talked about so often, it gave me an extra year to hang out with him and that was a lovely thing.

What effect did being a nurse have on your writing—besides providing good material?

I think I’m a better writer because of the nursing. To diagnose you have to be able to observe and put things together. All the subtle things you have to look at as a nurse helps you describe characters in writing. Writing is truly intimate and so is nursing.

Do you think if you hadn’t been a nurse you would have been a writer or do you think you can’t separate the two?

I think my primary vocation or calling is to help to heal. I think I did writing as a way to help heal. I had done home care for a while, and when I left nursing. It was after a period of time when 5 or 6 of my patients died—notice I said, my patients died on me—and I can look at that girl very fondly now and see the things that might have helped her deal with it more easily, but it allowed me the kind of satisfaction that I’ve not found in a much easier life afterward.

I know you are a critic of our current healthcare system, what do you think needs to change?

We have to have universal health care, we really do. We’re I think, 44 of 46 on the list of the best health care in western culture. As a civilized nation, we should have it and it’s also a good business model. Otherwise [the uninsured] will just go to the emergency room. I don’t know whether its either greed or just dumbness that keeps politicians from seeing that. Maybe they just don’t know.

What is different about nursing since you first entered the field?

Before it was a medical machine and you had to fight with the doctors, but now it’s a business model, where all the things that made the difference in your pay, the intimacy you were allowed with patients, the time you were allowed to spend, the hands-on care you were allowed to give—all feed some part of that calling in you, and now they’ve limited all of that by the understaffing. So that they may give you more money but there’s less satisfaction, more frustration. I think we’ve devalued nurturing and caretaking in our reverence for the rational. Unless we start to value those nurses at the bedside what we wind up with is a lot of infighting because any oppressed group oppresses.

What can nurses do to change the system?

What we can do is be can be kind to each other, whether each other is a nurse or a patient. We can remember that a lot of healing happens in areas that we don’t understand. We know that children die of morasis if they don’t have nurturing, and I believe strongly that there is an inherent healing power in caretaking and nurturing, if you bring with it real caring that you feel for a person. Nursing is a hero’s journey. If we believe in ourselves, we can then make new models of nursing that will move us forward into the place of healers.

Finally, how did nursing shape your life?

I guess I lived my life fully because of nursing. I forgave myself lot of the things other people judge themselves for. It was harder to beat me down because I saw what other people went through. You see the best and the worst and you’re introduced to the whole spectrum of human existence. I saw an awful whole lot of heroism whether it was vulnerable patients or nurses who went above and beyond, doctors who wanted desperately to help. It’s the one passion that I haven’t been able to beat.

What Type Of A Caregiver Are You? Are You A Wounded Healer Or A Merchant Of Hope?

Admin — Wed, 02 May 2012 00:25:59 +0000

By Shahina Lakhani
http://throughlifeanddeath.com

In a previous post I introduced the idea that there are two types of caregivers with their unique styles of giving care that affect not only their own quality of life but also of those they take care of.

The first type of caregiver is like the wounded healer. S/he feels that caregiving and/or working with the old and the dying is their calling however they feel emotionally overwhelmed by the suffering they witness. Each person’s plight weighs heavy on their heart and creates a new wound.

The second type of caregiver believes that each phase of life comes with some loss and some new hope. They consider end of life transition as a part of our experience as living beings. As a result, despite the grief of impending loss they are able to find hope and help improve the quality of life of those they serve.Today, we are going to look deeper into the mind set of these second type of care givers. I like to call them “The Merchants of Hope”.

We live in an era where everyone wants to stay young and live forever. However when we come face to face with the reality of the fragility of life, there is a potential for a huge shift within our psyche.

Some people listen to this calling that comes from deep within asking us to look deeper into what our lives are all about. However, there are plenty other people who fight tooth and nail to avoid shifting gears and their perspective.

When we acknowledge the fragility of life, veils begin to drop. All of a sudden the masks we have been wearing all our lives to protect ourselves start to disappear one by one. Read full article here

Shahina Lakhani, RN, MSN, NLP Master Practitioner, Reunion Kinesiology Facilitator, Theta Healing Practitioner: Shahina has been a nurse for over 25 years. She has worked as an educator, Nurse Practitioner and a Hospice Nurse. Her passion is to empower people to live powerfully and experience well-being until their last breath.

Eat Your Truth or Spit It Out

carol-gino — Mon, 09 Apr 2012 20:31:22 +0000

Nursing is by and large still a women’s issue. The men who have entered have a well developed feminine aspect and are, I believe, part of the Universe’s way of helping us stand up for ourselves and own our own power. I’m not saying we’re not in a difficult situation when we don’t stand for ourselves, but what I am saying is that if we don’t, we won’t be using our gift of service to it’s fullest capacity. In the end that will cost all of us dearly. When we, as women, refuse to stand up for our weak, our young, our old, our disabled, how can we hope to survive as a species? Everyone knows how dangerous female lions or tigers are when someone or something threatens their young. Are we, as humans, less fierce? Why have we allowed our care taking and nurturance to be devalued in our society-for money? God knows that all politicians use “family values” while they refuse to help support those women who are trying to hold it all together in the mess those politicians have made of our world? How can we, as nurses, turn away from the suffering of others? How can we act like battered spouses and stand behind and yet protect the hospitals and doctors we work with? Have we got Stockholm’s syndrome- identification with the aggressor? Are we going to keep eating the truth we know or are we finally going to spit it out and tell the healthcare consumers what we know that endangers them so they can at least stand for themselves? If we don’t, aren’t we as guilty as those who do the damage we know about? Let’s start by going online to places where the public already is asking for help ie. Occupy Healthcare and Americans for Healthcare and all those other consumer sites. Let’s share our knowledge even if we don’t share our names. Then let’s each of us–there are 3 million of us¬¬– mail a letter to one politician so they understand what’s going on. Most have admitted that they never really read the bills. So then let’s educate them so they can stand for us and our patients. Most have admitted that they never really read the bills. So then let’s educate them so they can stand for us and our patients. That’s something we can all do as a beginning.

Nurses: Expert Witnesses or Hostages?

carol-gino — Fri, 06 Apr 2012 21:34:54 +0000

This is truly a call to action unless we all want to be in the same place thirty years from now. We have to have the courage to change and know that if we have to forge “The New Nurse” we, who have been there, are the ones who have to do it. But in the meantime…. We have to tell our stories! Each of us have them. Stories of patients who suffered because of bad policy, incompetence or poor staffing. Stories of damage caused, and harm that is being caused now. We, as nurses, are the expert witnesses. And there are millions of us. Politicians and policy makers don’t know any more than regular consumers. Their research is done with pen and paper, not with fluttering hearts and struggling breaths. Their policies are decided with impersonal charts and numbers. We have to let them know what we know or we leave everyone defenseless. If each nurse tells one story, writes one story, and sends that story to a local or national newspaper, or magazine, calls a TV station and a local Congressmen, we will finally be heard. With every political donation, we could attach a healthcare horror story. With so many of us telling the truth, we might even be able to help some of those patients that we’ve fought so hard for the right and the knowledge to save. But as long as we stay silent, as long as we stay separate, we have no power to nurse, to teach, or to change the sick healthcare system we have today. Then we will be party to, and guilty of, sacrificing all the patients we lose to the savage god who runs the Business of Medicine. If we’re not with our patients, we can’t serve them. The bottom line with replace us with those who are so much less able to comfort those or are dying or intervene for those who can live. If we don’t stand up now–together as one– our patients won’t be able to keep us in hospitals. Without nurses to advocate for them, they will be powerless. And, we, as nurses, will become as extinct as Unicorns. This is as historical a moment in history as the civil rights movement or equal rights for women. Don’t let’s fail ourselves and those who count on us. The deficit in this society today is far more treacherous than only a lack of jobs and money. As a progressive society we have a social duty to take care of each other, and our sick, our young and our disabled. Nurses are the only ones who can turn the tide in Healthcare. Nurses Together. It’s that or we sell out and become hostages to the big corporations. What choice will you make? What choice can you make? They can always fire one of us, and two of us, but not 2 or 3 million of us. And if not now, when?

Did We Trade Our Nursing Caps for the Invisible Cap of Apathy?

carol-gino — Tue, 03 Apr 2012 01:56:38 +0000

“Why are you sticking up for Amanda Trujillo?” nurses have asked me. My first response was, ”She fought back with the courage of her beliefs.” But the truth is that I believe she could be any one of us. Whether we find out she did some foolish things, or her judgment wasn’t always perfect, doesn’t mean to me that we should throw out all the other truths that her case has uncovered. One truth is, that while there are organizations to protect patients, we have no organizations to protect nurses. While our nursing organizations can make policy to tell us what they expect of us, we can’t count on them to support us if we follow even our own Code of Ethics which they’ve developed. Through Amanda’s case, I learned the Nursing Boards are there not to protect nurses, but to protect patients from nurses. Nurses are taught to advocate for patients. Against whom? I am now questioning the conflicts of interest between the hospital that fired Amanda and the members on the Arizona board of Nursing. I’m intensely grateful that Amanda’s case brought all of the real issues for nurses forward. The fear and intimidation has become so much more obvious. Instead of joining together, we as nurses began to fight among ourselves – much less threatening than fighting the system. Exposing the defects of any system is uncomfortable but ultimately necessary for any system to change. I don’t like all the greed I see in our society because of the new transparency laws that the government has imposed on the business of healthcare, pharmaceutical houses and financial institutions, but I understand that there’s no way to fix it without that knowledge. I’d like to believe that everyone who runs our country and our corporations is there because they want to be shining heroes to make life better for all of us, but the fact is that greed is one part of human nature and apathy is another. I was really surprised to find out that we, as nurses, are pretty much on our own if we’re working in a hospital. God knows what kind of targets we are as we go into expanded practice as primary caregivers because doctors are no longer willing to accept the treatment that we have been willing to for so long. Now, though I’m a big believer in education, I’m forced to ask what the benefit is to getting a better education if there’s no organization that’s going to cover our backs, and no legal team to help defend our right to practice? We all got so used to “Groupthink” as nurses, and are so fearful that we don’t want to change the status quo. What I’m grateful to Amanda for is she put herself out there, whatever her agenda was. I can’t know that, so I take her at her word. It worked for me because I was able to see what kind of a system we really had, who was there for us, and what our resources were if we made mistakes. I haven’t determined who’s right or wrong. I know a lot of the situations that Amanda was accused of, I’ve encountered over my own years in nursing. They are truth to me because of my own experience. Therefore, I owe it to myself to give Amanda the benefit of the doubt – as I would any nurse – because I know how many times I was falsely accused. All of what any of us think is only projection unless we know the real truth, which even the law doesn’t reveal. All I know is that if I look at the difference in the power positions of doctors and nurses, I can see the potential for abuse. Once you have doctors bringing money into a corporation, and nurses as part of a hospital budget, that hospital can cut at their discretion, there’s no way it can be fair to nurses or patients. The fact that we don’t know what resources are available or what steps to take if we as nurses get into trouble if we follow our organizations suggestion to get a higher education, and also our own Code of Ethics to advocate for patients, leaves me with only one conclusion. Healthcare has to change, and we have to find it within ourselves to help implement that change. Knowledge is power. And we – as nurses – have the knowledge. Now we need to stand together so that tomorrow’s nurses can be all they can be. We managed to get rid of our caps, but what did we replace them with?

Another set of Angels

carol-gino — Tue, 27 Mar 2012 04:08:07 +0000

Nurses And Learned Helplessness

carol-gino — Tue, 20 Mar 2012 18:18:19 +0000

Nurses and Learned Helplessness I remember a study done way back in the 1960’s that has always stuck with me. I learned about it by taking a course in abnormal psychology. It was called “learned helplessness,” and how it went was that the scientist took sets of three rats to study. These rats were put in a cage with a metal plate on the floor of each feeding station. The first rat was put into the cage, fed, as usual, and ate without any problems. She ate and thrived. But in the second cage, the rat was given an electric shock each time he lowered his head to eat. Then the third rat was given an electric shock some of the time, and not at other times. The most interesting thing I found out about their reactions was that both the rats who were never given shocks, and the rats who were shocked all the time managed to eat and thrive. It was only the rats who received the shocks intermittently who froze, wouldn’t eat, failed to thrive and eventually starved. Now, you ask, what has that got to do with Nursing? It used to be the many “thank you’s” from the patients were a break from the shock of a shouting doctor or administrators. Used to be that nurses graduated from school with the fervent hope that they could really help some people and even save a few lives. Used to be it was all worth it because even with lousy self-esteem, a nurse had to feel better when the patients felt better and you knew it was because of you. And to top all of that off, sometimes the doctors even thanked you and made you feel great because they appreciated you. But now that Wall Street owns most of the hospitals and they run on corporate bottom line budgeting rather than a healing model, nurses are in trouble. Most hospitals keep the nursing staff short so that they have much less time to relate and interact with patients. Patients are less happy with their care, and so there are fewer “thank you’s.” Nurses are now going to be mandated to get more education in order to be able to handle the responsibility for the tasks that they will be expected to accomplish. We’ll have more to do, more paperwork to be sure we cover the corporate liability, and less connection to the patients. So, as I study it, I can see there’s more low level constant shock, not so much intermittent shock, and little or no just rewards. So maybe getting even more used to less satisfaction, having less expectation, will become the norm. It will be better cause it will feed you–you won’t starve. But then again, the young women or men who go into nursing won’t be on a hero’s journey, won’t be looking to make the world a better place, won’t complain about the shocking conditions. Or maybe each of us has to come up with a new model of nursing that reflects what we need to help our patients heal, and then all of us email our organizations to see what they can and cannot do. That would be a start.

Nurse Bytes 12: Is Nursing Becoming Extinct? Why I Still Fight for Nursing

Admin — Tue, 13 Mar 2012 18:31:50 +0000

Nurse Bytes 11: A Nurse is…What?

Admin — Tue, 13 Mar 2012 18:23:53 +0000

Nurse Bytes 13: Tomorrow’s Nurse

carol-gino — Sat, 10 Mar 2012 21:34:46 +0000