To know that you know
All of the nurses proclaim the need for knowledge about the
patients’ diagnoses and medical treatment to know what to
look for and to be confident in one’s assessments and actions.
In surgery wards, the nurses state that both the observations
and the subsequent measures are standardised according to
what type of operations the patient has undergone. But
understanding of the situation of the individual patient is also
highlighted. The nurse from the rehabilitation ward emphasised
this by telling her story:
For instance when it comes to patients with stroke, they are so
incredibly different, I don’t think I’ve met two that are alike. In the
beginning, I thought that a patient with stroke was a patient with
stroke, with the same symptoms and so on, but now I don’t get
surprised if one patient has these signs and another patient is