Healing with Heart from Moss Communications

Love in Action

Healing with Heart: Inspirations for Health Care Professionals, is the latest book from Moss Communications. The book is a compilation of everyday stories and vignettes that are used to suggest a more meaningful way to express and experience our work. Healing with Heart offers a unique perspective that demands credibility. It is written by a health care professional for health care professionals.

The following is an excerpt from a reflection in Healing with Heart. It brings awareness to the reader that while we are often hesitant to use the word "love" in the context of work, it is a potent force in all we do, especially in our interactions with those requiring healing--coworkers and patients alike.  This reflection points out examples of love in action that may escape our immediate awareness.  Here is an excerpt from Love in Action from Healing with Heart:

Walking down the long corridor of the oncology unit late one evening, I paused to look into a patient's room and noticed a nurse sitting quietly on the side of a bed holding the hand of an elderly, closed-eye patient.  In another room, a caregiver raised the head of a particularly weak man to help him swallow.  In a third room, an aide was changing the soiled linen of a patient's bed.

I wondered how these caregivers do this, hour after hour, day after day.  Don't they get discouraged seeing so many helpless patients? How did they develop sensitivity to the needs of their families, particularly those of dying patients?  How do they keep their warmth and good humor when faced with so much suffering? Maybe it is because they think as Paul who said,"...love bears all things believes all things hopes all things, endures all things.  Love never ends."

There is no way to write love into a job description.  No one gets paid extra if they add that component to their work.....