Love What You Do!

Steve Jobs, an American business magnate, industrial designer, investor, and media proprietor, was the chairman, chief executive officer, and co-founder of Apple Inc.; chairman and majority shareholder of Pixar; a member of The Walt Disney Company‘s board of directors following its acquisition of Pixar; and founder, chairman, and CEO of NeXT. Jobs was widely recognized as a pioneer of the personal computer revolution of the 1970s and 1980s and co-founded Apple with Steve Wozniak. Not bad for a college drop-out.

But Jobs had a secret…he loved what he did. He explained it like this:

“Your work is going to fill a large part of your life, and the only way to be truly satisfied is to do what you believe is great work. And the only way to do great work is to love what you do. If you haven’t found it yet, keep looking. Don’t settle. As with all matters of the heart, you’ll know when you find it.”

At AccessNurse we have a great team of triage nurses who truly love what they do. Recently an AccessNurse manager challenged her team to discuss the importance of identifying who we are and what we do for our callers on every call. The responses were indicative of how much all of our nurses love what they do. The responses are provided below.

“Who are we?

 …We are the calming voice when a mom has been up all night with her crying child and is at wit’s end.

…We are the encouraging voice of hope when the caller is thinking of suicide and sees no other way out.

…We are the reasonable and logical voice when the caller believes what they read on Goggle and thinks their mosquito bite is cancer.

…We are the educated voice that provides information when asked, ‘Can I take these medications together?’

…We are the empathetic voice when a new parent is worried about his or her newborn.

…We are the guiding voice when serious symptoms require immediate attention and the caller doesn’t know what to do.

…We are the caring voice…because that is what they need…for us to care for them.”

“The only way to do great work is to love what you do.”

We’ve all heard quotes and sayings that express the virtues of loving our work. Many of them focus on the central belief that doing what we love is beneficial in a number of ways. Many studies have been conducted on the subject, and all have reached the same conclusion—great work is when people do something that is vitally important to others…when people focus on the recipient of their work whether it’s a customer, colleague or even a community that needs support—that’s when we see and feel the passion, empathy, and love reflected in what we do.

“The only way to do great work is to love what you do.”

Loving your job is well and good, but loving the impact that doing what you do has on another person is very special. Whether the caller is frightened and needs a comforting voice that tells them that it’s going to be okay and guides them to appropriate care, a parent frantic about a sick child, or even a healthcare provider who is in great need of family time—the work our nurses do is important to each of them, and they love what they do. That dedication and love impacts every caller as well as the nurse.

AccessNurse salutes our triage nurses for the patience, caring, and concern they express to each caller.