For anybody who has a full time job, you probably spend more time with your coworkers than you do with your own friends and family. That’s a pretty normal thing these days. But I think for nurses (and other healthcare workers), we develop a bond with our co-workers that is unique, probably unlike any other profession (except maybe police and first responders).
These people are my family. Even the ones I don’t like all that much. We spend nights, weekends, and holidays together. They see me at my worst. My most exhausted, most grumpy, most vulnerable. They understand me in ways that my own family never could – why I can get up to tend to the needs of my dying patient and their grieving family one minute, and make an inappropriate joke the next. They get that when I call the elderly man in room 17 a “little crumb,” I mean it as a term of endearment. Not only will they listen to my most disgusting, gut turning stories, but they will fire back with horror stories of their own. When my patient is crashing, they are who I turn to for help. When I am at a loss for what to do next, they’re the people that give me the answers. We share secrets in the small hours of the morning while our patients are sleeping and we are trying desperately to stay awake. They’ll shit talk that asshole doctor/patient/family member with me when I feel I’ve been wronged. They will roll up their sleeves and dive elbow deep into the stinkiest, nastiest poops with me without a second thought. They understand that sometimes, your empathy just runs out. They don’t expect me to be perfect. They are what gets me in my car every evening when I just really, really don’t want to go to work. They make the crazy, abusive, rude, ungrateful patients tolerable.
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