Nursing Compliments

Recently, I completed a recommendation letter for a fellow nurse who is applying to a graduate program in trauma nursing. She wants to become a Clinical Nurse Specialist, similar to a Nurse Practitioner. I've known her for awhile, like her, and thinks she's a good nurse. It was not hard to think of a few good things to say.

But I didn't just want to say "good things." I wanted to say the best thing!

Thomas Merton, a Trappist Monk, once wrote, "Build a chair as if for an angel." His meaning was clear. If you are going to produce something, do it in the best way and for the highest good you can imagine.

Writing a recommendation letter for someone is tricky business. You don't know who will read it. Who are the members of the selection committee? Is there a selection committee? Will the reader be a sticky organizational bureaucrat, or is there room for creativity, levity? Knowing these things is important if one is trying to say the best thing for the circumstances.

I erred of the side of saying the best thing I could say regardless of the circumstances. Along with all the hagiographic blah blah blah, I simply wrote: "I would have no difficulty entrusting Ms. (Nurse) with my patients, with myself as a patient, or with any of my family members as patients."

Certainly the highest compliment one nurse can bestow upon another.