The Nurses Behind ‘Nurse: Empathy Heals’
How Empathy Shapes Patient Care and the Nursing Profession
National Nurses Week begins this week, and we're marking it with the release of the official trailer for "Nurse: Empathy Heals,” a documentary about a profession that quietly holds the rest of us together.
Before there was a film, there were stories. Real stories, told by real nurses through ETSU's Nurse Narratives Initiative (NNI), a partnership between the Tennessee Center for Nursing Advancement at ETSU, StoryCollab, the ETSU College of Nursing, and the ETSU Research Corporation, and funded through generous support from Ballad Health.
Through NNI, more than 70 nurses have sat down with us and told the truth about what this work asks of them. A few of their accounts are shared within the documentary. But there are so many more compelling, courageous stories that are well worth watching and give us a fuller picture of what it means to be a nurse.
Take Lisa Scholz, a nurse practitioner who took a contract caring for soldiers after learning of a veteran who had been cleared by the VA and then immediately walked outside and died by suicide in the parking lot. The standard mental health questionnaire — check, check, check — didn't feel like enough. So, she started asking real questions. When a soldier broke down in her office one day, she went around the desk and held him. She still thinks about the veteran in the parking lot, as well as the one sobbing in her arms. For her, empathy is the driver behind her work.
Or consider Karen Carver, who was overwhelmed by emotion the first time she watched a delivery turn into a uterine rupture. Her charge nurse caught her wide eyes from across the room and helped her through it. A decade later, Karen sat in the hallway with one of her own students — wide-eyed and crying after a hard pediatric ICU shift — and just listened. Her story demonstrates how empathy gets passed down.
Pause, Reflect, and Feel, by Karen Carver
Or take Michelle Littleton, who at 16 was hit by a car during cross-country practice. The pain in the ER was unbearable until a student nurse grabbed her hand and didn't let go. That student nurse held her through the difficulties that day and in the weeks that followed. Michelle went on to walk again, go to prom, and become a nurse herself. She found her calling through the compassion shared by another.
Dying Had to Be Easier, by Michelle Littleton
These are the kinds of stories “Nurse: Empathy Heals” elevates. Watch the trailer and visit nurse.etsu.edu to learn more about the film, the initiative behind it, and how to bring it to your community.
Empathy heals, and nurses prove it every shift.