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Photo by Roly Rodriguez |
 “Normally as a nurse at the bedside, you do your very best to make all the clinical decisions you can make to keep the patient safe until you absolutely have to call the physician,” says Chris Tanner, RN, an eICU nurse at Health First’s Hospitals in Florida. “What the eICU is doing is allowing the nurse to access a physician and another critical care nurse in the same instant they see a change in the patient. What that does is promote crisis prevention, rather than crisis intervention. If we can catch changes early and intervene immediately, we save lives, and that’s what the eICU does.”
Photo by Marcus Sarkesian
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 “When we enter patients’ homes, we put our cultural values behind and start with a blank slate,” says Najah Bazzy, RN, BSN, director of Transcultural Care Services and the Human Diversity Home Health Care Program of Home Health Care Partners Inc., (HCP), Southfield, Mich. Bazzy’s transcultural program focuses on culture-specific, community-based care. She instructs her staff to ask patients upfront how they want to be cared for. Nurses draw on patients’ answers and put Leininger’s theory to work by either preserving culture-related health behaviors or negotiating around and reorganizing them.
Photo by Altobell Imagery
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 Surgery is a precise practice that requires all team members to be in perfect step with each other. RN first assistants like Mary Weis, RN (pictured), of CentraCare Clinic in St. Cloud, Minn., are often there in the OR keeping time alongside the rest of the OR team. Because she works side by side with surgeons, Giselle Harris, RNFA, MSN, CNOR, likens her role to that of a dancer. “There is a certain way to hold your arms and your hands while assisting, which is a lot like learning to position yourself during a dance,” she says.
Photo by Andrew Campbell
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 New parents often have many questions about how to care for their new infants. Nurses like Charlotte Johnson, RN, of John H. Stroger Jr. Hospital of Cook County in Chicago, provide support and encouragement to parents in many ways. They answer questions and offer information to help parents make decisions about their children’s health.
Photo by Young Kim
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 Long-term care nurses like Pat Thornton, RN, of On Lok Senior Health Services in San Francisco, form a strong bond with their older patients. While providing care that reflects patients’ individual cognitive and physical stages, nurses learn about their patients’ unique life experiences like living through WWII; life during the Great Depression; and their views on the past, present, and future of this country.
Photo by Mark Paris
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 Most patients who are hospitalized in the ICU feel vulnerable and afraid. Like any critical care nurse, Linda Scharp, RN, who practices at St. Francis Hospital, Roslyn, N.Y., is there to give an encouraging word or a reassuring touch. Undaunted by complex technology, these nurses gracefully meld high-tech with high-touch to heal patients’ bodies and minds.
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