Being a disciplined person, I perform well academically. Even so, the classroom training required assimilation of a tremendous amount of information in a short period of time.
Lab sessions were serious, but also hilarious. Practicing procedures on manikins and fellow students could have been more fun if a stern, old Navy nurse instructor had not monitored us.
My fellow students were team players. We were all of different ages and backgrounds. The youngest was seventeen and the oldest, fifty-two. We also had two men in our class. This was unusual to see in 1975.
My first thought in lab practice was how uncomfortable it was to be physically touching total strangers. Now how would a person give nursing care without touching patients? Getting accustomed to tasks like this was one of the purposes of lab sessions.
The day that clinical rotations began, my joviality went right out the window. We were caring for "real" patients who were sick, in pain, and dying. This was not going to be easy. I wondered, 'What have I gotten myself into?'
My phobic brain went haywire. I had never seen a dead person. What would I have to do? Could I handle it? How would I control my emotions? How did I feel about death?
I had no answers. I felt that I could not handle the mental discomfort. The other students were expressing similar feelings as well.
In a lecture the following week, our instructor brought up the subject of death and dying. She shared her personal views on the topic and we discussed typical feelings of the patient, family, and staff. Our assignment was to read and study information on Elizabeth Kubler-Ross. I left the classroom confused. I had never heard of this person and I wondered why she was so important.
Elizabeth Kubler-Ross is a medical doctor, psychiatrist and world-renowned authority and counselor in the field of thanatology. She was born in 1926, in Switzerland, and holds joint citizenship in the U. S. and Switzerland.
Dr. Kubler-Ross received her medical degree from the University of Zurich in 1957. She continued her studies in New York, and completed her degree in psychiatry at the University of Colorado, in 1963.
