Leapfrog...

Leapfrog is a children's game in which players vault over each other's stooped backs. The first participant rests hands on knees and bends over, which is called giving a back. Games of this sort have been called by this name since at least the late sixteenth century

(Wikipedia)

A simple, transitive verb form means to play the game. In business, it means to make obsolete. In military terms, the transitive verb means to engage the enemy with one unit while another moves ahead.

I’m too old to play the children’s game. Too peaceful to employ the military strategy. So, that leaves the business term. And I have to wonder: am I obsolete? Have I been leapfrogged?

I remember, as a child, thinking how old my parents were, in chronological age, for sure, but more importantly, they were “behind the times.” Although they were both quite intelligent and well-read, they didn’t seem to know enough about “modern times.”

Alas, I am my parents’ child and I have to wonder, did “modern times” leave me behind? Sometimes, I think I have a handle on things. After all, I DO know how to text on my cell phone. I even have a smart phone with a QWERTY keyboard! I can send and receive text messages, yes, but don’t ask me to upload my cell phone videos to Youtube.

I don’t know how.

But more vexing to me is that I seem to be out-of-step in my own profession. At least, at times, it feels that way. I don’t “get” the new ways of doing things and the emphasis on reimbursement and cost overruns and ROI’s. I find myself wondering what happened to plain, old-fashioned patient care?

I start thinking that, hmmmmmmm, maybe I have been leapfrogged.

And I don’t like it. I don’t think my knowledge base is out of step with the needs of my patients. I don’t know a lot of things but, when it comes to patient issues, I have seen it all and done it all. Well, almost. Enough to know when something is wrong and to get some help with it. Not enough to rest on my laurels and stop learning new things.

Maybe it is time for me to step aside and let the new generation of nurses do things their own way….

And then, I have a conversation such as the one I had this morning. I was talking to a nurse who is younger than I am. Much younger than I am. And she had some very valid concerns about a patient she was going to see today. We talked over her concerns and she asked me what I would do in the same situation.

And I told her.

I think I helped her look at the situation more globally, and I think I gave her some insight into a difficult area of nursing care. Patients can’t hear everything we say, and they aren’t necessarily going to do what we suggest they do. So, the secret is: make your words count. Say something that “sticks with” the patient. Something that they will still be thinking about long after the nurse has discharged them.

Something worth giving a second thought…..

And then, I thought again. I haven’t been leapfrogged. I have a lot to share with the younger generation of nurses. I may be “seasoned” and “of a certain age” but I am still a damn good nurse.

I won’t be a fuddy-duddy for at LEAST ten more years!