I feel very lucky that I had Kim as a clinical nursing instructor, as I got to know her style of nursing. We had a difficult patient on the telemetry floor, who she had taken care of as a staff nurse previously. He had severe pulmonary hypertension, and was resistant to a lot of treatments, as he was frustrated with his diagnosis and all of the treatments he'd tried, and he could be a bit crotchety. He made a point of discussing the extent of his world, which was at this point only 38 feet long, the length of his oxygen tubing. He had no energy, he had no more "tether" and he wasn't even able to go out to his garden to take care of or pick his flowers.
One day that we had clinical, Kim visited this man, even though she was not working and did not have students involved with him. She gave him a crystal flower from the gift shop and a card telling him that she hopes that someday he can pick his own flowers again. This made him very happy and he told me the following day that it made him feel special that someone had done something extra like that for him. He smiled and told me "that's from MY nurse", in a very happy and proud tone. Even though it was a small thing, it showed me as much as all of my clinical experience taught me; it showed me that the first step of being nurses is remaining human, and seeing our patients beyond their diagnoses.