Assemble your equipment…reassure the patient…those were the first to steps of 
every nursing procedure when I was in nursing school…they could be done simultaneously…if the equipment was already in the patient’s room…
What I didn’t understand at the time…and what…Bertha…has been happy to point out to me…since…is that assembling the equipment…is part of the reassurance…
Nothing is more concerning to a patient…than a bumbling nurse…who keeps leaving the room because…she forgot something…
But…more than that…assembling the equipment…is reassuring to the nurse…gives her a nice run through of how the procedure is done…let’s her see it in her mind…just gets her ready…and who wants to waste a pair of sterile gloves…because they forgot to open something before putting them on…well…I may have done that a time or two…and it is quite frustrating…
Anyway…I hadn’t thought of these concepts in a while…but…Bertha…brought it up to me in the gym this morning…I was doing a new routine today…I’d read it carefully…several times…when I got there…I started by assembling the equipment…grabbing the mat…picking out the dumbbells…changing the pulls on the machine…so…when I was ready for the next exercise…it just flowed…well…at least as much as it could flow since I’m still learning the techniques…
So…I’m going through the process…and…Bertha…is sitting on a bench…doing her nails and watching…but…she reminded me of the old nursing procedures…saying that…they relate to so much more than nursing…or…even gyms…for that matter…
Hmmm…I contemplated that a bit…as much as I could and concentrate on the work at hand…and realized…that not only was she right…she’d managed to reassure me in the process…
Jane
