When there isn’t enough (a Nurse’s burden)

There’s a position in the ER some of us nurses rotate through called ‘First Nurse’. It’s called that because this person is the first nurse to set eyes on every person that walks through the front door. An experienced nurse can take in a lot of information with a glance and save valuable time for an acutely ill person.

On a busy shift this nurse also takes a significant role in the prioritizing of patients going to ER beds. At times there can be almost twice as many people seeking treatment as there are places to treat them, so ensuring the most vulnerable get placed first is extremely important. We are also tasked with assuring the safety of the crowds that have to wait. We watch for test results and keep a wary eye out for de-compensating patients – those going from ok to bad to very bad.

There’s a very particular type of psychological stress you experience when need outpaces resources. You have what people need, but not enough for them all at once. Keeping watch over the elderly, the very young, the miserable, the hurting, [the angry] while unable to provide them the services they need in a timeframe all find acceptable is very trying. I have a theory that every hour spent in this position on a busy shift takes an hour off that nurse’s life.

There are other areas in my life where I feel this now familiar type of stress. I see need everywhere. I see people who need a committed friend, kid’s ministries that need consistent volunteers, foster kids that need advocates, charities that need money, struggling moms who need someone to give them a break, relief organizations that need skilled workers…. oh and my own family who need an attentive mom and wife. And I have resources! I have skills and a desire to help. I know that I am capable of meeting many of those needs. But not all of them. Not all at once. There just isn’t enough.

But just like in First Nurse – not having enough resources doesn’t mean I stop seeing the need. Sometimes I walk around with it like a weight on my chest – this sense of responsibility- the conviction I need to do more. I start to treat my life like an ER waiting room – what is the most critical right now? Who can wait a while? What can sit on the back burner and what is vital? But life is as tricky as triage can be. Every ER staff knows that the most dramatic and attention grabbing person in the waiting room is seldom the sickest. It’s the polite man at the back of the line quietly waiting his turn that will turn out to be having a massive heart attack. So this feeling follows us around that try as you might… you’re going to miss something important. One day the thing you overlook will be the thing that mattered the most.

What do you do when there isn’t enough?

I read a book once that challenged me completely. It was about a woman who followed her passion for Christ into the slums of Mozambique. Her and her husband have spent their lives there working with the poorest poor and adopting abandoned children as their own. Everywhere on every side is need. Ironically, the book is called, ‘There Is Always Enough.’ And that’s the answer. My resources are limited. I’m a finite being and I’m not the Savior. But’s God’s resources are vast and inexhaustible. I’m constantly trying to run on my own power and the destination is burn out. The answer is God’s power. I don’t need to try harder, I need to surrender.

Without God’s power working through me my good is limited. It’s like pizza from management on a crazy shift when what we needed was better staffing – a nice thought, but not enough.