I am currently reading through this treatise of a book entitled Called to Care: A Christian Worldview for Nursing. I\’m actually not a huge fan of it so far (probably just because of the sheer length of it), but it does have some beautiful moments. One particular sentence, though, struck me particularly hard:
We will define Christian nursing as a ministry of compassionate care for the whole person, in response to God\’s grace toward a sinful world, which aims to foster optimum health (shalom) and bring comfort in suffering and death for anyone in need.
loc 150, emphasis added
In dreaming about what I want to do with my nursing career in future, I found this sentence to be particularly enlightening and motivating. It marries together so much of the things I have found so good about being a nurse, and it helps me to form a vision of what I want nursing to be to me in the future.
Having worked a few years in an inpatient hospital setting, then the majority of my career with outpatient oncology, it\’s funny to think that I think of myself as a minister. Well, maybe not right now, but eventually, that\’s where I want to be. (The authors of the book would probably argue that I already am, by virtue of my doing this work and being a Christian, but I\’m going to focus on something else here.)
Although much of my work is the hands-on clinical work of nursing (and very specifically oncology nursing), like administering chemotherapeutic agents, doing education on medications and treatment modalities, accessing ports, inserting IV\’s, drawing labs, triage, etc., it is still my chosen ministry. It is the way I have chosen, through God\’s leading in my life both known and unknown, to work in order to enact his creativity and healing in the world. As this quote says, it is \”in response to God\’s grace toward a sinful world…\”
But the eventual ministry I want to end up in is as a minister in the Church, stewarding, guarding, and caring for her members, in order to help her to stand as an example to the world of what it looks like to live in Shalom. I had always learned as a child that this word meant \”peace.\” But really it is defined more as a sense of completeness. (See this wonderful video for a more \”complete\” picture: https://youtu.be/oLYORLZOaZE)
Holistic health is one of the very basic foundations in the nursing profession. Although I\’m sure many other medical professions can stake a claim in the \”holistic\” camp, nurses are uniquely situated to help patients tie together aspects of life that might not otherwise be seen by their clinicians, as we perform many of the hands-on tasks, education, and procedures that are ordered for them. We are taught that the spiritual, emotional, psychological, and physical are part of their care, and all of these aspects need to be seen and understood in order to maximize wellness. Shalom is, therefore, in the DNA of nursing.
(I say this with at least a little bit of embarrassment. I don\’t believe in putting any profession or vocation on a pedestal, which is another reason wh the book is hard for me to get into, as it definitely puts nursing on a very high one. But I do find so many things about my profession to be incredibly admirable and rewarding, hence the verbiage… and all future verbiage… xD)
One of the side effects of living in a broken world, however, is that somewhere along the way, things break down. The stuff that\’s supposed to keep working in our bodies breaks one by one. So nurses are also called to advocate for patients when this happens. Death and dying, illness, disease, these are all a result of the corruption of what should be. So nurses step in to help ease their patients along in this journey.
Dear Lord,
Thou great Healer
May thy great strength and power flow through me
and lend skill to my hands,
vision and judgment to my mind,
and compassion to my heart.
Give me the strength to minister to my fellow man
in his hour of suffering and travail.
Make me worthy, Lord, of this saintly task,
and may I faithfully discharge my duties in deep humility,
worthy of the trust and faith placed in me.
This is a prayer I\’ve used before stepping onto the floor to care for patients. I don\’t come from a faith tradition where catechisms and rote prayers were a part of our regular worship practice, but this particular prayer caught my eye at a time when I was still a baby nurse on the hospital floor, and I needed something to lean on in order to center myself. I am reminded that although the world is broken and that it wasn\’t created this way, God enters as Healer and Comforter. So in those broken moments, we as nurses come in, hoping to be that presence in our patients\’ lives, not only to bring healing in brokenness, but also help them to live whole and full lives.
As I pursue doing health ministry, researching and trying to connect with others who have done this, I will try to keep this definition of nursing as ministry in mind. That being said, there are also so many other questions I want to explore, many of them personal.
Who can I go to to learn from?
Where is my time best utilized?
How do I do this well?
Can I do this while still maintaining my current lifestyle or at least taking care of my family sufficiently financially?
Can I somehow use this forum and maybe even a social media presence to grow a \”ministry\” of sorts online?
I\’m sure there are more, but, as usual, I\’m running out of time to keep thinking through all of this. But I will continue to pray and hope that in exploring all of these ideas, God will use the time and effort put in in ways that I would not have dreamed and may not even be aware of.