Daily Nurse: A Nursing Holiday Tale: The Window and the Work

For most folks, the holidays are a time of reunions and tradition—loved ones coming home from out of town, kids back from college, and living rooms full of joy and laughter.

However, my holidays have been far from traditional for the last six years as an ICU travel nurse. Most Thanksgivings and Christmases, I’ve traded home-cooked meals and family gatherings for hospital hallways and patient care across the country.

It’s easy for most of us to forget that sickness and emergencies don’t take a holiday break. They don’t wait for the season to pass, and behind every patient in need is a team of clinicians putting their celebrations aside to deliver care to our patients.

In my eleven years as an ICU RN, I’ve worked many holiday shifts as a staff nurse and as a traveler. While most clinicians accept that working holidays come with the territory, it takes on another layer of meaning as a traveler—you’re serving your patients, community, and colleagues. Travelers who take assignments during the holidays often help cover shifts for permanent staff, allowing them to spend time with their families.

Years ago, I was working the night shift in an ICU in Colorado on Christmas Eve. It was an incredibly busy night, even by ICU standards. Between the holiday “skeleton crew” and new admissions from the ED, we all had our hands full. In fact, it was so busy that although we’d all brought dishes for a potluck, we never got the chance to sit down and enjoy a meal together.

Between my assignment and helping other nurses, it was almost a shift change when I finally caught up with my tasks. As I charted my I/Os, I saw a coworker staring out the big window facing the mountains. The first light of dawn was beginning to shift the colors outside. Something about the stillness of the scene pulled me in, and I walked over to stand beside her. A few seconds later, another nurse passed by, paused, and joined us. Together, we stood in silence for a few moments. That was the first time all shift it had occurred to me — it was Christmas morning.

The quiet and beauty of that moment was such a contrast to the chaos of the last twelve hours. As a clinician for many years, I’ve learned to seek out these moments of reflection — there’s always been something grounding in seeing the world still turning outside the hospital walls. The work of healthcare can be chaotic and stressful, and the hours can be long — the tasks keep us all busy, but my choice to stay connected to the deeper purpose of healthcare is what keeps me going.

Every shift is an opportunity to make an impact, regardless of the date on the calendar and even beyond the patient right in front of me. That Christmas, that quiet moment of reflection was my reminder that even during the toughest shifts, I’m a part of something far more significant than myself.

Read Zac’s story here.