Understanding

I work at a rehabilitation hospital on the traumatic brain injury floor. I LOVE my job. It is so much fun, very challenging and definitely rewarding. I work with amazing people--other therapists, nurses, nursing assistants and MDs. It is a very enriching environment.

But it is also a very emotionally challenging environment. You must AND you must not identify with your patients. You need to have compassion and sympathy. But the moment you move towards empathy you will be a wreck. You cannot put yourself in the patient's shoes too regularly or you won't be able to work. Yet you must put yourself in the patient's shoes to have some understanding of their struggle, how best to motivate and how to support the patient and their family.

It shouldn't be a surprise that we have had a couple of YOUNG Iraq war veterans. Only a couple. They came to us because their families were either dissatisfied with VA care or they live here and were very persuasive and able to bring the patient from Walter Reed to us.

This past week a nurse from the Army came out to the hospital to talk to us about the experiences a soldier might have and how to relate better to military families and what they are going through, what they might expect.

In some ways you want to see these military folk just like any other person--who need TLC, compassion and receive the same efforts you give everyone else. You don't want to see them as different or treat them any differently.

But they ARE different. They do need some special consideration, particularly when encountering them in a hospital setting.

The nurse was in Iraq for a year, was never injured herself, but daily cared for soldiers who were seriously and not so seriously wounded. Just like any other nurse, right? But she can't get the smell of burning flesh out of her nose, she jumps at the grocery store when things fall unexpectedly (like a bunch of palates that sound like small arms fire when they crash). And she did not get injured, she is home safe with her family.

Now consider a person who is brain injured. They are harmed during a war effort. The last things they can clearly remember involve being surrounded by people in uniforms, people who speak in military jargon and don't take any shit. Then they "wake up" in a rehab hospital with soft spoken girls (most PTs/OTs/SLPs in rehab hospitals are women) in scrubs. Man, that must be scary. They have post traumatic stress disorder but can't express it, can't cope with it. Because they are processing everything else that is going on.

If you haven't been to a rehab hospital, especially a brain injury floor, you will have trouble understanding.

I can only marginally identify with these families as I grew up as an Air Force "brat". But even I struggle to alter my approach. I cannot emotionally tolerate putting myself in their shoes most of all. These guys aren't even my patients but I suffer inside just watching their struggle.

My hospital may in fact take more Iraq veterans. We have good services and have impressed our Army nurse visitor. I hope I can set aside my political and emotional issues and do my best to provide good therapy and needed understanding.