Tip:
Highlight text to annotate it
X
My name's David Stevens. I'm a staff and charge nurse in the Emergency Room.
To summarize emergency nursing, you have to be ready for anything.
Most of it is not glamorous. Most of it is
people who don't have access to
primary care come here because they need help and they need help right now.
Here, we never know; we literally never know what's going to come through the door next.
I guess I really like that.
If you had asked me before I became an
emergency nurse, if I was an adrenaline junkie. I would say
goodness no, but
I guess I might be.
The most significant
thing that
anyone in any profession does is
actually is to connect with the patient.
Especially as a nurse, if I'm not making that personal connection, I'm not doing my job and I'm selling patients short.
I do martial arts. I do yoga and meditate.
I keep a garden
Simple, quiet life mostly outside of here.
So David Stevens is
one of our finest charge nurses.
One of the things I see as a great strength is his ability to connect with people.
And he's got this really
wonderful sense of humor. A couple years ago I actually considered cutting my hair
because I wasn't getting enough exercise
partly due to the fact that every time I thought about going for a run
"well then I'm going to have to wash my hair"
It turned into this big thing and I wouldn't go running.
Well that's not good; that's not healthy.
So I married.
I've been married for over ten years; I have two daughters
and that mostly defines my life outside of work.
I spend a lot of time with my kids which is wonderful. One of the things I love about
being a nurse and my schedule is that
I work three days a week. They are very long days but that gives me four days a week to spend with my family.