While doing my preceptorship at Brighton First Care, I encountered a patient that made me think about community and public health nursing. This young woman was non-English speaking and was alone. This created a barrier of communication between the patient and health professionals. I grabbed the iPad interpreter to assist with communication with the patient. As I was speaking to her, the provider came into the room and took over with her. She had come into the urgent care because she woke up and her tongue was black. This must have been a scary time for her, and she was obviously concerned. The provider just told her that it may have been caused by one of the medications she was taking. When I watched the encounter, I was a little bit upset. The provider gave her no reassurance that her concern was valid, and she would be okay. He just told her it might be from the medication and walked away. In that moment I wanted to go up to her and give her that reassurance that I felt she needed, but the interpreter was already taken away. Looking back, I regret not doing that for her. Seeing the young, seemingly healthy, woman there with a big Ziplock bag filled with many prescription medications, I wondered if this is not the first time this has happened to her. As a nurse, it is important to be an advocate for your patients and I saw the importance of that on this day. This experience made me think about for encounters like this in the future, I want to be an advocate and help reassure that their feelings are valid. I wish I could have done more in that moment, but now all I can do is learn from my mistakes and hope that I can do better in the future.
