When helping someone pick up books they dropped on the floor or serving food at a homeless shelter do you feel a connection with the person you are helping ? Most of the time doing a good deed is something we do to be nice or because that's how we were raised. Most of the time after helping someone we never see them again or check in to see how they are doing. In "How Can I Help?" they talk about how a nurse and their patient have so much interaction, yet they are so distant. I wonder why that is. Maybe it's because a nurse feels like they don't want to get too attached to their patient or thinks they might get offended. However, that is not how all nurses are with their patients. Some of them ask about their personal lives and the patients ask about theirs. "The importance of social meanings and understandings in patient-nurse interaction is not fully apparent to nurses, but important in the patient experience." (http://bmcnurs.biomedcentral.com/articles) To a patient how a nurse interacts with them can help ease their stay in the hospital and can even comfort them. The ability to empathize with others is very important when working with others. Building a relationship with them and building the gap between patient and nurse can make the biggest difference.
"In many societies, however, the state of helplessness is so common that the experience has to be shared. There it is, after all- the poverty, the illness, the homelessness, the hunger, the death, It can't be denied or pushed to the back of the mind, because it's simply too prevalent." (page 135)
The University of Texas is right in the heart of downtown Austin. If you have ever been on the drag, you have most likely notice that there are a lot of homeless person on the street. Wether we want to admit it or not part of our everyday experience involves people stricken by poverty. It is a sad reality that we all have to face at some point in our lives. Growing up our parents try to shelter us from poverty and allow us to believe that the world is a happy place where everyone has everything they need. However, as you grow up you notice that things aren't as they seem. Their is poverty, hunger, and destruction in the world. In Austin alone the population of homeless people has increased 20% since last January. (http://www.kvue.com/news/local) There is a problem and something needs to be done to fix it. As a school, UT Austin has several student organizations focused on serving the homeless and various shelters around Austin. As a school we have such a huge opportunity to make a huge difference, because what starts here changes the world!
