Morning Vitals: Looking Back at My Life in Nursing in 2019

Moving swiftly to the end of this year, I’m looking back and looking forward at the same time. This week, I’ll write about my look back. After Christmas, I’ll write about my look forward in nursing and on Morning Vitals.

Thanksgiving flew by … like a turkey. Well, actually, it didn’t because my family have our large gathering a couple of Saturdays before the fourth Thursday of November. This year, that was convenient because Thanksgiving was my assigned holiday. I felt a little like Rocky Balboa in the 1976 movie Rocky. Do you remember that bit of dialogue between Rocky and Adrian after her brother Paulie tosses the turkey out of the apartment?

Rocky: Listen, I don’t want no turkey anyway, ya know.
Adrian: But it was Thanksgiving.
Rocky: It was what?
Adrian: It was Thanksgiving.
Rocky: Yeah, to you, but to me, it’s Thursday, right?

Having passed Thanksgiving, Black Friday, Cyber Monday, Giving Tuesday, and every other day since Thanksgiving, we’re rushing headlong toward Christmas. Following that, New Year’s Day. As it turns out, I will be working New Year’s Eve as well.

During the course of this year, my nursing life has changed dramatically. I began 2019 working night shift on a medical unit, which I had served as shared governance committee chairman and “skin champion.” Those roles fell by the wayside as I made the transition to day shift with the wound and ostomy team. Following orientation, I began a certification program in wound and ostomy care, which I will finish in 2020.

Another major development in my nursing career, which will be obvious to readers of Morning Vitals, is my publication of this blog and an associated Twitter account. The first posts and tweets began in January 2019. By the way, if you’ve spent any time at all reading this blog or interacting with my tweets, thank you very much. I hope you will enjoy what is to come.

Thus far, I have posted at least once a week, and I have have more than 50 posts on various topics. Earlier this year, I expressed interest in posting more than once a week, but I have since decided not to do so at this time because of the needs of my certification program. So, for the time being, once a week it is, with the occasional second post.

I’ve covered a greater variety of topics this year than I anticipated. Looking at my tags, I can see that the most extensively discussed topic has been community in nursing. Following this are the issues of gender diversity in nursing and issues facing men in nursing.

Conference coverage has been significant part of my activity on Morning Vitals as well. This year, I tried my hand at coverage of the Emerging Trends in Nursing Conference at Indiana Wesleyan University (see here, here, and here) and the 2019 Annual Convention of the Indiana State Nurses Association (see here, here, here, here, and here). If you missed my live-tweet coverage at the time, please feel free to check it out here.

Well, this was a bird’s eye view of 2019. I’ve thoroughly enjoyed my first year on Morning Vitals, and I hope you have, too.

How was your 2019? Will this year turn out to be one of the highlights of your career?