Unique…

I have recently started an account on facebook and have gotten in touch with some friends from high school. I noticed the new last names and the different places people live. How many lives could be ours with a single changed moment? Aren’t we all a sum of moments and experiences? If one moment in my life were changed, I might have a different career or a different last name. I am intrigued by this concept. We all play the “what if” game from time to time, but it is truly impossible to imagine how variable our lives are.

That is how it goes in nursing as well. Every student in every class in nursing school has a different experience. Even if we had the same teachers, we go to different clinicals with unique patients that teach us very different things. I remember back to nursing school with some of my friends. When we were learning about electrolyte imbalances, we all seemed to pick one that we thought was more important than the others. I thought it was potassium, on friend thought it was magnesium and another thought sodium.  Maybe in clinicals we had an experience that made one more important in our minds. Or maybe our perceptions in the classroom made us think that our instructor told us that one was more important.

Every single nurse has had a unique experience that brings us to the point where we are right now.  We all have something to teach and we all have something to learn.  We, as nurses and as people, are unique in this world; a sum of every moment we have lived, diverse in every way from the person standing next to us.