Great Stories
Montana Campus Corps:
College Students Meeting Critical Community Needs
Doing and Being by Autumn Filler

While I was volunteering for AmeriCorps, I had the opportunity to work on a pediatric inpatient unit in a local hospital. One morning, my preceptor and I reported work to discover that a young boy had been admitted in the night in a state of ketoacidosis. He was promptly diagnosed as a type I diabetic and treated appropriately with careful regimen of diet, medication, and close observation. The boy recovered quickly in the hospital, but in order for his health to be maintained, his single father had to learn to manage his disease at home.
It was clear that the boy's father held his son's well-being as his highest priority, but he was not confident in his ability to learn or master the tasks necessary to manage diabetes at home. My preceptor, the diabetes educator, and I worked with the boy's father for hours. We educated him on diabetes, taught him how to calculate medication doses, and helped him inject insulin into his son's abdomen. The father grasped the concepts fairly quickly, but still struggled to manage the stress of the situation and gain confidence. Soon, he had a breakdown. He suddenly began to cry, yelled at the hospital staff, and became physically agitated. We all became worried that the son would not be safe at home.
Fortunately, my preceptor demonstrated excellent interpersonal skills to diffuse the situation. She quietly escorted the father to an empty room to talk, while I played with the little boy to distract him from the tension of the situation. My preceptor's one-on-one conversation with the boy's father revealed a great deal about the situation at hand. The father told my preceptor that his son was the most important thing in his life, and he was terrified that if he couldn't manage the boy's condition at home, his son would be taken by child protective services. My preceptor reassured him that he was learning well and gaining competence, she referred him to resources in the community, like home health, that could assist him after discharge, and she reinforced his strengths as a parent.
In the end, the father mastered diabetes treatment tasks and took his son home from the hospital in a matter of days. He thanked the staff for their persistence, their understanding, and their kind words in a time of great stress. This experience taught me that while nursing is often a "doing" profession, based in hands-on clinical skills, it is also a "being" profession in which empathy and interpersonal skills are indispensable. I felt privileged to help a small, loving family emerge from a crisis stronger than ever before.


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