Kathryn Jamison

Nurse

Chicago, IL

Biography

Kathryn has been a nurse for three years in the hematology oncology unit at Lurie’s Children’s Hospital. Kathryn always knew she wanted to go into nursing and loved that nurses were always at the patients bedside getting to know the families. She found a passion for hematology oncology, specifically with pediatrics, and started volunteering and working as a CNA while she was in school. As a nurse, she is able to care for these patients and get to know their stories. In the hematologyy oncology unit, patients often times they come back and sometimes they stay for a long time. They are able to provide care for these kids at their worst times, but also their best times.

SUPPORT

It’s definitely hard. All nursing is hard, but this is a different kind of hard. I think trying to first have some exposure to it before you commit to it and thinking about how you cope with challenging times, like in your daily life, and applying it to this whether you could do it at work too. The biggest thing that has helped me is my coworkers, we’er all so close. When you have those challenging times at work, even the happy times, having those people near you, truly creates a bond that in unlike any other.

RELATIONSHIPS

They’ve always emphasized this in the beginning. When I first started they talked about boundaries and relationships with patients and keeping them seperate from work and personal life, but of course as you get close to these patients you think about them outside of work and it starts to affect your daily life. Sometimes it’s in positive ways, but if something traumatic were to happen that also stays with you. Inside of the hospital, I give it my all, I’m absolutely there for them, but its important to realize that outside of the hospital they have their friends and family that are going to be supporting them. We don’t know when we are going to see them next, you get close with them, but its hard to separate that relationship.

STAYING POSITIVE

The thing with nursing is that you never have work to do at home, but sometimes the emotional things stay with you. Sometimes it’s difficult to talk about it with people that aren’t in the field and might not fully understand it. Of course they are always supportive, but it’s hard to tell them heavy things that also puts them in a hard spot as well. I’ve noticed that it’s good to have people that you can talk about work with, but it’s also good to have people that you are able to connect with and not even talk about work.

When their kid is here with us, we have got them. We are going to do everything we can to take care of them and they can just be focused on being the parent. We will do the rest.