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Forty Years on the Front Lines
BNH spoke with registered nurse Marian Schmitz, who was recently awarded the "Wholeness of Life" award by her colleagues at Griffin Hospital in Derby.
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Business New Haven
8/9/1999
By: BNH
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How long have you been a registered nurse?
Forty years. I worked a couple of years at Bridgeport, when I first graduated from nursing school there. I've been at Griffin ever since. I took a few years off when my children were babies, but I've been back there over 30 years.
Is there one thing that stands out as being the biggest change you've seen in nursing or health care generally over that 40 years?
Oh my, there have been many! There are a lot more technical things - a lot more equipment than we had years ago. I think there's a big change in attitude: in the way we approach the patients and the way the patients are. It's come a long way in many ways. The biggest thing that I do, that I get the biggest satisfaction out of, is my work with bereaving mothers and families who have lost babies, either early in the pregnancy or later on. I've found it very rewarding working with these people, as sad as the situation is. The big change is the fact that years ago, when the situation arose, the babies were just quickly taken away from the parents - they didn't see the baby and no one talked about it, it was sort of covered up. Nowadays everything is faced in the open. The parents are encouraged to spend time with the infant, and to express their grief, and to be given consoling, which is a big change from years ago. This is mainly my biggest satisfaction, and they appreciate every little bit of consoling they get.
How long have you been doing this?
I've been working with this for probably about five years now. Luckily, it's a small part of the overall picture of my OB work. But it is a very satisfying part of the work.
Do you see any changes in the new nurses entering the profession or the kinds of people who are becoming nurses?
I think basically we're all just people who are used to doing for others and giving. The young girls, the ones I have worked with in my department, are very giving and very caring, and this shows in the response of the patients to them. I think OB is a whole different situation than the rest of the hospital. I basically stay in OB, and it's very different from the other floors, so even I don't see the whole picture.
Do you have more help now from nurse's aides or other support people?
Again, on the medical/surgical floors they do use some technical people, but in OB we have only registered nurses. On very rare occasions they will send us a nurse's aide or nursing assistant when we're very busy to help pick up the slack. But that's rare.
Why did you choose the field of obstetrics?
When I went into nursing originally it was because I loved babies and I wanted to work with babies and mothers. For quite a long time I worked in other fields - I did medical/surgical nursing, some pediatrics. It was a little over 20 years ago when I got back to OB. It took me 20 years to get into it, and I've been here another 20.
What changes have you seen in the doctors over the years?
Many. In our setting of OB we're very closely related to the doctors because we work with them so closely, and they have to really rely on our judgment and what we do because we spend so much time with these patients. But when I first graduated 40 years ago doctors were treated as gods. There are a few of us now who still remember, but most of them just laugh when we tell them. When a doctor came down the hall you were expected to practically bow to them. They were really on a high pedestal. You never questioned their judgment; you never said anything; what they said was the rule. Now we're more on an even ground: They respect us, we respect them. Now we're more partners.
Do you think that has anything to do with changes in gender relations, and the fact that there are more women physicians now?
I think so. I think the women have been given more respect, and are now allowed to show that they can earn that respect.
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