In the meantime, I asked the people on my newsletter list to tell me what they considered to be the number one problem facing their work lives as Registered Nurses.

One woman told me she worries about being hit, punched and scratched by a patient. Apparently her best friend was injured and had to leave the nursing profession as a result.

Another said the retention of experienced nurses was a problem. This problem will grow exponentially with Baby Boomer retirement.

Another said over work. Others said disrespect. One person cited conflicts between nurses and doctors involving hierarchical attitudes with doctors treating nurses as second class citizens if not down right servants to their every need.

Then I received communication from Annette Tersigni, otherwise known as Yoga Nurse. She describes in the following post what I know to be the true solution to all our problems and challenges: that when we relax, calm down, nurture and develop a spiritual tool chest whereby we pause and choose the best tool to meet and greet every challenge, then we persevere, overcome and experience pure joy in our lives.

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I just read the comments about nursing care on the Heal Naturally Ning. All of your stories and sharing are a representation of nursing across the board.

I have worked in Canada and the USA and it is the same story everywhere. I teach wellness programs, stress management and yoga to nurses and other caregivers at my little local hospital.

There are multiple reasons for improper care. A nurse called in sick almost every shift when I worked on the cardiac unit a few years ago. Naturally we were working with a skeleton crew. Quite frankly it's a miracle that there isn't MORE that goes wrong on any given shift. It is by the grace of GOD/ESS, spirit, angels that we nurses and our patients are carried to safety the vast majority of the time.

Every night when I walked onto the floor, I spoke my mantra prayer as I entered the hospital "to do no harm."

I worked with nurses who have been showing up for 12 -13 hour shifts for 25-30 years! They were all on multiple medications for blood pressure, cholesterol, depression, anxiety and--and--and--they did an excellent job!

I was fortunate to work with brilliant staff who really tried to provide excellence. Yet even with this there are some who are just plain burnt out and show up because they have no other choice to pay the bills.

As an advocate for nurses and helping them with wellness on the job to increase morale above all, I often heard nurses say to me:

"THIS JOB IS KILLING ME AND I'D KILL TO GET OFF THE FLOOR."

I took this to management to advocate for nursing staff but management is concerned with the bottom line. When the days come that the bottom falls out of nursing because there will be no more nurses to do this damn hard job: Only then will the powers that be wake up.

Let's see how we manage with out nurses, because the entire health care system will collapse without them

I believe change can only happen on the level of "consciousness." It is my work as a nurse/healer/educator to do just that. To help the nurses to REMEMBER, to fill their cups, to come home to the inner nurse within, to the divine inner therapist that cleanses, purifies and makes whole.

I bow to all the nurses. As we like to say in the South: God bless (bliss) y'all.

Annette Tersigni

Yoga Nurse

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Spirituality is a way of life where you immerse your consciousness in a power greater than yourself be-it God/ess, nature, animals, Buddha, Krishna and/or Jesus or Christ Consciousness.

The key is to imagine your spiritual tool chest. Let's say you practice meditation, Ho'oponopono, yoga, mindfulness awareness which is living in the present moment.

Consciously put these into the beautiful box or chest you imagine for yourself.

With great mindful awareness, choose which tool to use for any and every seemingly unsurmountable dilemma.

Use it.

Open yourself to all possibilities.

Call on the angels.

Relax into the infinite for positive solutions.

Each of the chapters in this book shows examples of the tools you can use in your line of work.

Enlarge on them. Create new ones, pull out the tools that lay dormant and now pull at you for revitalization.

The time is now. In-Joy it.