Reflections on Nursing
After 46 years in the profession, I retired from my last nursing job in June 2025.
Though retired, I will keep my license, both to keep future nursing options open but also because becoming an RN requires much blood, sweat and many tears. I’m not ready to let it go just yet.
Did I LOVE it? Yes! It was a great ride and allowed me to support my now-adult son while providing endless and sometimes unexpected opportunities.
One of my favorite things about being a nurse was building relationships with people I served; some call them “patients” or “clients,” but they are all people. The job also allowed me to learn new things — treatments, equipment and procedures — and to teach others. It’s a profession of collaboration with other professionals to create best practices, to problem-solve, to research new knowledge through clinical trials, to work in an environment that honors excellence, to know that what you do affects people’s lives.
Most days, the positive outweighed the negative; and other days, I just had to work harder to find the silver linings.
It was not always pure bliss. Some of my not-so-favorite things included: illegible handwriting — especially physicians, who wrote orders for care; (pre-printed doctors’ orders helped resolve this); medical staff politics or poor communication that could negatively affect patient care and therapeutic outcomes; faulty equipment and supply shortages; lack of trained staff; disparities in care; and administrators’ misunderstanding of what was needed by staff to fulfill their roles.
One of the joys of nursing is that it offers variety, many different avenues to practice the profession. Most nurses work in a multitude of arenas during their careers, and transferring to a new area can help prevent boredom and burnout. Others, of course, spend their entire careers in the same specialty area and become incredibly valuable clinical experts.
Demands on healthcare professionals are many, varied and often quite intense. So it goes for nurses, who spend more time with people receiving health care than most other healthcare providers, especially in the hospital setting. Finding ways to balance these demands is imperative for longevity in the profession. For many nurses, this is a journey unto itself, as self-care does not seem automatic nor to come naturally for everyone.
It’s not easy — part art, part science, all hard, demanding work. I was fortunate to have known from a very young age that nursing was my life career path. I have no regrets; it was such a rich and deep experience, with lots of surprises along the way.
Kelley Devlin-Lake, RN, BSN, PHN of Eureka worked at many local healthcare facilities and organizations over her 46-year nursing career.
