An exclusive interview: Healing our trauma through sharing & creative expression

Poetry is an absolutely wonderful avenue. It’s therapeutic and cathartic to be able to get our words and our stories out as nurses. Think about it: staff nurses, for instance, work with hundreds of patients a year, and all of these stories are inside of us, all this traumatic stuff, especially with the pandemic and burnout, the high acuity, the numbers of patients, the PPE, just everything going on. It's just invaluable to be able to jot your thoughts down. You can do one of three things: you can keep your words to yourself on paper, or in your laptop or phone, you could throw it away, or you could share it with the world. I believe in sharing it, because when you connect with other people they'll be like, “oh, I went through that, too,” or “oh, I remember that patient - we couldn't save them,” or “gosh, day shift was so busy today.” I remember reading the progress notes, and these are all stories that we have that stick with us forever, so why not release and get the words out? Poetry is actually one form, you can write a play, you can do a film, you can exercise, anything that's creative and you're passionate about is very therapeutic and cathartic.

In poetry and nursing, you're sharing moments that are so important. It’s also just therapeutic, and nurses need therapeutic avenues. It just shows how human we are. Poetry shows our humanness and our personal vocation of caring for others, a lot of it is caring. In poetry, it's showing the caring, and in nursing, you're showing the caring - you're demonstrating it.

Susan J. Farese, RN, MSN, is the president and owner of SJF Communications, an agency providing personalized PR, publicist, social media, web, copy, photography, and coaching services. Susan is also a legal nurse consultant, and a veteran of the U.S. Army and U.S. Navy Nurse Corps. Her experience is diverse, from clinical nursing to management to staff development and consulting roles in civilian and military healthcare organizations and academia. She’s a filmmaker, mentor, actress, public speaker, voiceover artist, and published author. This year, she published the second edition of her book of poetry, “Poetic Expressions in Nursing: Sharing the Caring.”

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