A close friend of Jesus had been dead four days when he asked Lazarus' sister, Martha, to open the tomb (see John 11). She knew the risks were great – along with the odor.
Pray this week for Kathy Schoonover-Shoffner, JCN editor, as she talks with nursing students and represents NCF and JCN April 6 – 10 at the 2011 National Student Nurses Association annual convention in Salt Lake City, UT. Ask God for conversations with students that will reflect his heart for healing and wholeness.
Where were you in the spring of 1984? That's when NCF launched the premier issue of the new Journal of Christian Nursing. Yes, that was a long time ago!
An event from my junior year pediatric rotation left a big impression. I observed nurses in the pediatric intensive care unit caring for a patient hospitalized due to a drug overdose. The patient was comatose and on a ventilator. One particular nurse sat at the nurse's station loudly discussing the patient's condition, adding her personal opinion that no additional efforts should be made to care for this patient because the state was paying for the care.
"Recently I admitted a patient whose circumstances were as undignified as I've ever encountered," writes JCN editor Kathy Schoonover-Shoffner. "He was a mess: unkempt, smelly, psychotic, obese, and in cardiopulmonary distress . . .
"After a stretch of challenging shifts, a question plagued me: How do I sustain excellence in this intense work of nursing?" writes Kathy Schoonover-Shoffner in her JCN editorial, "Sustaining Excellence."