Parallel poetry: I am your nurse

Discussion board post for NURS608 Philosophical and Critical Foundations in Nursing, posted on May 29, 2022. Post is reflection on poem "I am your nurse" by Perry (2009).

The most important lines in this poem, for me, are near the end where the writer states, "I am you,/and you are me,/and we are one" (Perry, 2009, p. 24). These lines encapsulate the central theme of the poem as the interrelationship and codependency of nursing and patients. As Bender states in her paper on the philosophical ontology of nursing, "Basically, nurses do not exist without patients and nursing practice does not exist without people having health/environment experiences" (Bender, 2018). Throughout the literature on nursing theories and paradigms, there is a consistent return to the patient-centered foundation of nursing praxis, and this poem symbolizes this through the repeated use of phrases framed as "I... [and] you", suggesting that the nurse and patient exist in tandem and whose experiences would be meaningless without the other. My contribution to the poem would be as follows:

I am your nurse.

I coordinate your healthcare.

I facilitate your healing environment.

I celebrate your success.

I mourn your suffering.

I share the meaning of your experience.

You give meaning to my profession.

References

Bender, M. (2018). Re‐conceptualizing the nursing metaparadigm: Articulating the philosophical ontology of the nursing discipline that orients inquiry and practice. Nursing Inquiry, 25(3), 1-9.

Perry, B. (2009). More moments in time: Images of exemplary nursing. Edmonton, AB: AU Press.