NurseWeek: Inspirational Images

Lillie Schockney, RN, is director of education and outreach for Johns Hopkins Breast Center in Baltimore. A breast cancer survivor herself, she has helped hundreds of women through the ordeal and its aftermath.

But it wasn't until she was featured in a five-part TV series, "Nurses," that aired last winter on the Discovery Health Channel, that her husband understood what her job was all about. "After he saw this documentary, he turned to me and said, 'Now I know what you do each day,' " Schockney said.

The series followed Johns Hopkins nurses who worked in various specialties: pediatrics, critical care, oncology, mental health and neonatal intensive care. It focused on nurses and their patients: nurses working with advanced technology in the critical care and neo-natal intensive care units; nurses coordinating medical teams; nurses drawing up care plans; and nurses encouraging patients through difficult cancer treatments, comforting babies hooked up to machines and mediating family disputes. Physicians rarely were seen.

The series has won praise from nurses, who say it shows the public what they actually do and how much they need to know. Nursing schools are buying copies of the series to show to students and prospective students.

Schockney said a number of nursing students have contacted her to find out how they can work with breast cancer patients. "I hope that it will inspire more people to choose this profession," she said.

It is almost impossible to hear Schockney's story and not feel inspired.

As a nursing student in the 1970s, she stood frozen as a patient who had just had a biopsy for breast cancer followed by a radical mastectomy awoke from the anesthesia and begged her, "Tell me it isn't gone."

"I will remember her face for the rest of my life," Schockney said. "She began crying and I cried, too. I had no idea how to help that person."

It wasn't until she was diagnosed with breast cancer herself that she understood what her patients were going through, she said.

In the series, she tells the camera she believes she became a cancer survivor specifically so that she could help other women diagnosed with breast cancer. She often answers more than 100 e-mails and phone calls a day from women who have breast cancer.

She has guided many through the process of choosing treatment and preparing them for life after treatment. On her days off, she flies to speaking engagements around the country. She has written books on cancer survival.

Now, she is working on ways to help survivors in the months and years after treatment. She recently organized a breast cancer survivor retreat. Although she tells cancer survivors it is important for them to make time for themselves and to relax, Schockney admits she does not practice what she preaches. She gets little sleep, she said.

She carries in her head the images of two nurses. One has iron-gray hair, cat-eye glasses and a menacing expression. This was the first nurse she ever encountered, in an adult hospital ward where she was placed after complications from a tonsillectomy. Instead of holding and rocking a terrified child, that nurse gruffly ordered her to stop crying. Schockney said she decided then and there that she would be a different kind of nurse.

The second nurse, Mikey-Schockney never knew her last name-took care of her on a single night shift when she had her first mastectomy.

Several times, Mikey came to her room and asked how she was. Each time Schockney said, "Fine." The last time Mikey came in, Schockney's visitors had left and she was alone, thinking about having cancer and what the future might hold. When Mikey asked if she was OK, Schockney said yes. Mikey did not leave. Instead she asked again, "ARE you OK?"

Then she leaned in and looked Schockney in the eye. "I started crying," Schockney said. "She put down the side-rail and held my hand and let me ramble. And she cried, too."

A woman came to the door and said sharply, "Mikey, you're late for report. Everyone's waiting." Without turning around, Mikey answered, "Tell them to wait. I'm with a patient."

When she addresses nurse groups, Schockney often tells the story of Mikey and then tells them, "Each one of you has the opportunity to be a Mikey. If we do it well or we do it badly, we will always be remembered."

Mary O'Neill, RN, a clinical nurse in the Johns Hopkins neonatal intensive care unit, works with premature infants, machines and technology in an exciting, fast-paced setting.

She works to save babies sometimes so tiny they fit into an adult hand. She deals with family members who often are panicked and distraught. She sends healthy infants home with smiling parents. She holds dying babies when the families can't get to them because she believes no one should have to die alone.

After the series aired, neighbors told her, "I can't believe that's what you do."

"They were all pretty taken aback, seeing what nurses do," O'Neill said. "I don't think a lot of people realize that nurses are always on the front lines. We're the eyes and the ears, 24 hours a day, seven days a week, and I think the series showed that."

Like many nurses, O'Neill isn't thrilled about all the aspects of her job, including pay and benefits. "Some things haven't changed in the 20 years I've been here," she said. For instance, the hospital contributes $100 for nurses to attend a conference, an amount that hasn't changed since she started, she said.

"But that's all secondary," she said. "I enjoy doing what I do. I like working closely with moms and families and seeing babies go home. I feel good about myself at the end of the day when I go home."

TV programs such as the Discovery series, which tell the stories of nurses such as Schockney and O'Neill, may be the best way to recruit young people into nursing, said Donna McNeese-Smith, Ed.D., MN, RN, assistant professor of nursing at the UCLA School of Nursing. "What other profession could you possibly have that offers the variety nursing does?" she asked. "Part of the problem [with getting people into nursing] is that people see only a limited view of the nurse."

Those who produced the film and nursing school administrators who showed it said it was impossible to know how many people "Nurses" may have inspired to enter the profession.

But Melanie Dreher, Ph.D., RN, dean of the College of Nursing at the University of Iowa in Iowa City, said attendance was high on the Friday nights the school showed the series to mostly freshman pre-nursing students.

"They loved it," she said. "People were excited by it. It was, wow, this is great, this is nursing." One student even brought a roommate who thought he might go into nursing after watching the series.

Although Dreher liked the part of the series she saw and thought it captured the excitement of acute care nursing, she thought it didn't fully depict the profession's long-term career potential. "Some of the leadership things nurses are doing," she said, "like nurses in the legislature."

Even those who made the series were surprised and impressed by the scope of the nurses' work. "It seemed like one of the obvious areas in health care for stories that hadn't really been told," said Claire Vande Polder, executive producer of "Nurses." "I was surprised to find out what key players nurses are in a patient's life."

One associate producer, "a really hard-core production person," Vande Polder said, was especially moved by what she saw. She told Vande Polder, "If I did it again, I would become a nurse."

Nurses and nursing schools around the country are hoping others will have the same reaction.