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The Nurse as Patient

As a nurse, it made me become more passionate about what I do, more caring. I spend more time with my patients talking to them. I spend more time explaining to them procedures that I’m doing to them … It just reinforced my feelings about care and the need for empathy for and with them.
We all know about the incredible care provided by our community of exceptional nurses. But what happens when the script is ﬂipped, and nurses are the ones who need to be cared for? What happens when nurses become patients?
It should have been the best of times for Stephanie Trowbridge. The veteran critical care nurse had just given birth to her ﬁrst daughter. But her euphoria quickly took a dark turn.
Tell us about how things started for you.
After I had my ﬁrst daughter, I started hemorrhaging — but it was slow hemorrhaging, and so it wasn’t really that obvious.
I got transferred to the postpartum unit. I just was really not feeling great, and so I called my nurse in.
Well, it was close to the end of shift, and I said, “I think something’s wrong.” She didn’t hesitate to go into action. Within an hour, I had ﬁve nurses working with me, and my doctor was with me. I think I had lost close to 2 liters of blood and was rushed to the OR.
My baby was safe in the nursery, and my husband nervously stood at my side. The lab tech couldn’t draw my blood with a BP of 60/40. I was losing blood fast. A newer nurse fumbled with my vitals. The charge nurse directed care, while my doctor quietly performed an ultrasound on my abdomen. As I, an ICU nurse, tried to manage my own care, there was a force of calm still in the room.
I have no doubt — it was my bedside nurse. She had given report, was about to leave for the night, when I rang my call-light. She was the Florence Nightingale of my hospital
experience. I couldn't tell you her name, but how I remember her.
How much do you remember at that point?
My distinct memory — because I was close to not being coherent by the time I was wheeled into the OR — was my nurse … that it was past time. She should have been home two hours before, or an hour, or something like that. I don't know exactly the time, but she stayed right by my bed and made sure I was in the OR safely, and, man, she kept me going.
Sounds like she was kind of a guardian angel.
I mean, being an ICU nurse who's trying to control her care while she's hemorrhaging is a little tricky. But she was calm and would whisper things in my ear — like I was doing ﬁne, and my baby was ﬁne, and my doctor's right next to me. So even though I had been a nurse for ﬁve and a half years, it was pretty instrumental to have her show me what I wanted to be doing all along.
I did. The next day she came in for a meeting. She came in to check on me, and she said, "I didn't sleep all night because I was just so worried about you, and I love seeing you up and happy." She said, "Oh, my gosh, this made it so worth it." I told her, "I'm sorry you had to leave late," and she just said, "No, this is what we do, isn't it?" I said, "It is. It is." So, this was a really great ending.
Do you recall anything else about her?
She was a seasoned nurse. She showed adequate concern, moved quickly to get help and took time to explain things to my incoming nurse, the new one who was obviously scared of my situation. She moved closer to my face when I was starting to lose consciousness, touched my hand, reassured me. She told me her plan and who came in the room to help her. The last thing I remember before the anesthesiologist took over was her telling me she would take care of my husband and my 5-hour-old infant until I was safe and back in my room.
No, but I could probably pick her out in a crowd, and I’ve seen her three, four hours of my life. So it was just like, “Yes, that’s the kind of nurse that we all should be.” That’s deﬁnitely who I want to be as a nurse.
How did her care and your experience during this time impact your career or nursing philosophy?
Incredibly. She became the model for my nursing philosophy. To be attentive to patients — not only to their needs and concerns but also to them and who they are. To be responsible for their safety while under my care. To obtain and use clinical knowledge to provide better, safer care. To offer hope and perspective in the midst of honest communication. Excellence in communication does not only extend to patients and families but also to the interprofessional team. To listen and be humble because I have been and may be again in their shoes one day, either as a patient or as a teammate.
Did this experience reafﬁrm anything you’d already felt as a younger nurse?
To be courageous to speak up for what is right and to take care of myself in order to care for others with ease and eagerness. To model and mentor these behaviors and standards whenever possible and whenever appropriate.
Anterior cruciate ligament injuries and subsequent rehabilitations are becoming more and more common. But what happens when the healing process doesn't go as well as it
should, and even though you're a critical care nurse, you're the one in the bed? Tamara Norton found out.
About two years ago, I had torn my ACL — a grade-three tear, which is a complete tear — and had it repaired. And, about
six weeks into that rehab process, I developed a joint infection. Three weeks after that, after going on IV vancomycin, which was administered through a PICC line, I developed what’s called DRESS syndrome.
No, it’s not. It’s drug reactive with eosinophilia and systemic symptoms. I went into severe septic shock, went to the emergency room and spent four days in the ICU.
Besides physically, how did this impact you and your career?
I never imagined in my life that I would be on the other side of the bed and be the patient. It wasn’t frightening at the time. When I look back at it now, it’s terrifying what I went through. But everything that I went through just changed my life in many, many ways.
How did it affect your outlook as a nurse?
As a nurse, it made me become more passionate about what I do, more caring. I spend more time with my patients talking to them. I spend more time explaining to them procedures that I’m doing to them. I talk to my patients when they’re sedated, paralyzed, just because I feel like they possibly could hear me, and I think it’s soothing. I spend time touching them, putting lotion on them. It just reinforced my feelings about care and the need for empathy for and with them.
So it has affected your delivery of care.
It has changed me so much. I feel like I was a very empathetic nurse before. But now it’s probably tenfold. I now believe that even though nurses are so sympathetic and empathetic to their patients, you really don’t know what it’s like until you’ve actually been there. And, since I have that ﬁrsthand experience now, my nursing practice has truly changed.

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Loyola Marcella Niehoff School of Nursing
By Loyola Chicago ABSN | Published July 18, 2018
When you think about it, nurses are the superheroes of health care. While they don’t leap tall buildings in a single bound or race speeding bullets, these extraordinary caregivers seek justice for their patients, especially society’s most vulnerable. Requiring strengths such as courage, compassion, and competence, the role of the nurse as patient advocate is a powerful one that’s taking health care to the next level.
The health-care industry, in the wake of our nation’s mounting nursing shortage, has finally realized the critical role nurses play in delivering quality, efficient patient care. After all, nurses have the most interpersonal contact with patients, putting them in the best position to act as liaisons between patients and families or patients and physicians.
Furthermore, the American Nurses Association (ANA), in its code of ethics, states “the nurse promotes, advocates for, and protects the rights, health, and safety of the patient.”
And as many health-care articles have suggested, when nurses have more responsibility in patient care management and a louder voice in workflow design, not only does public health improve, the entire health-care system becomes more effective.
The dictionary defines an advocate as someone who pleads the cause of another. In the nursing profession, advocacy means preserving human dignity, promoting patient equality, and providing freedom from suffering. It’s also about ensuring that patients have the right to make decisions about their own health.
Examples of advocacy range from lending patients a friendly ear to providing additional information to a patient who is trying to decide whether or not to accept treatment. But as a patient advocate, nurses must provide support in an objective manner, being careful not to show approval or disapproval of a patient’s choices.
According to RN Central , however, nurses often face several barriers when trying to effectively advocate for their patients, with the biggest hurdle being at the institutional level. Depending on the employer, some nurses receive little or no support from administrators, physicians, or peers when trying to carry out the patient advocacy role.
In keeping with our university’s promise to prepare people to lead extraordinary lives , our 16-month ABSN program , which is framed within the context of strong Jesuit, Catholic values, does more than just prepare you for a successful career in nursing. It also empowers you to go out into the world and serve as an agent of change in the service of others.
As an accelerated nursing student at Loyola University Chicago, you’ll learn how to treat individuals with integrity and compassion as well as provide quality, evidence-based care to diverse patient populations.
More specifically, we’ll teach you how to:
“We are dedicated to moving the world forward, and to do so we must be able to encounter philosophies that we disagree with and have conversations that sometimes make us very uncomfortable,” said Jo Ann Rooney, president of Loyola University Chicago. “Only when we take the time and spend the intellectual energy to learn all sides of an issue will we be able to successfully engage and advocate for our position.”
Becoming part of the Loyola community means becoming part of something bigger than yourself. Together, we’ll take on society’s most vexing health issues and look for ways to eliminate the health-care disparities that exist across neighborhoods and communities.
Being a nurse carries a certain amount of clout in society ― just look at the annual Gallup Poll results for the past 16 years. It’s a profession that continues to earn top honors for ethics and honesty.
Nurses also have the power to change lives and make the world a better place, part of why the American Nursing Association declared 2018 the Year of Advocacy . The group has dedicated 12 months to draw attention to the fact that nurses can use their influence to shape and bring about change in our nation’s health care system.
As a Loyola University Chicago student, you commit yourself to be a person for others, someone devoted to tackling the most complicated issues and doing what you can to elevate the most marginalized in our society. As a Loyola ABSN program graduate, you’ll enter the workforce a team-based, practice-ready nurse who serves with a passion for justice — even though scrubs don’t come with capes, power rings, or lassos of truth.
To learn more about the role of nurses in patient advocacy, contact our ABSN program admissions team today!
By requesting information, I consent to be contacted by Loyola University through my email, phone, and text using automated technology regarding enrollment.
Loyola University Chicago | Marcella Niehoff School of Nursing 2160 S. First Avenue Maywood, Illinois 60153 | 1020 W. 31st Street, Downers Grove, IL 60515 © 2022 Loyola University | Privacy Policy | (866) 891-0218

Nurse-to-Patient Ratio: How Many is Too Many?
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This article is sponsored by King University Online and was first published on March 12, 2019.

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