How Nursing Made Me a Better Crafter

I know this might make some people scratch their heads but really…this is a thing! I am a CNS who recently retired from the Air Force as a Flight Nurse.  After six deployments and over three years away from my family, I needed a break. But as most nurses know, you can’t just stay home and sit and be idle. I felt the same way and started getting into woodworking, painting, and crafting with many mediums, using my laser as my primary machine.  This not only kept my hands busy; crafting kept my head from focusing on unhealthy thoughts, and it gave me an outlet to tap into my creative side and make a few dollars as a bonus! As nurses, we have SO many excellent traits that make us wonderful humans and caregivers. Let’s talk about the close relationships these traits have between nursing and crafting.  It’s unquestionable, really, how nursing made me a better crafter! 

Furthering Education and Desire to Learn

Continuing Education is a must for professional nurses. Whether it is required by the state for your license, for your work training, or just because you want to be a better nurse and learn more than what is required. Completing Continuing Education or obtaining your Master’s degree shows that you are a dedicated nurse, and you strive for excellence in your current practice. As a crafter, I started by working with wood: crafting, cutting, painting, and staining different pieces. For my own knowledge and interest, I wanted to have more ammo in my crafting arsenal. I then started using acrylic, melting glass, needle felting animals, acrylic pour painting, and much more.  Healthcare and crafting are both ever-changing; I stay current for myself as a CNS and consistently branch out and upgrade my crafting. By using what I have learned with multiple types of crafting, I can now combine these mediums into unique projects, and I can expand my repertoire and offer more to my clients. It is so fun to learn this way!!  Better than death by PowerPoint any day. 

Scope of Practice

Nurses must perform within their scope-of-practice, determined by what they have been taught, what they know, and what they are able to do under their employers’ auspices. This keeps the patients safe, the nurse protected, and the working environment healthy and safe. To a lesser degree, crafting falls on this line as well. By my choice, I am able to go outside of my scope–of–practice without any punitive harm. Still, there are some repercussions; if I put the wrong material in my laser, it could damage it significantly and even cause damage to me as well. If I create a project using a new, underdeveloped skill, it might turn out unacceptable to the client, which could lead to a damaging review and ruinous reputation. The threshold of competencies is pertinent for both nurses and crafters; knowing your limits, and when to expand, them can ultimately lead to increased capacity, wider scope and broader authority. And as a crafter, a potential for increased sales! 

Detail Oriented

This is a given! Knowing the generic versus trade names, narrow therapeutic medication ranges and noticing minute ventricular changes on an EKG all demand that nurses are acutely aware of even the most minute details. As a crafter, matching paint color, selecting the best font, and developing a functional and accurate file, all require adept attention to detail to make the customer happy. Bad news travels fast in the hospital and even faster online. As a nurse, recognizing and reporting errors is difficult yet crucial, and as a crafter, the same goes for mistakes, but reporting is replaced by repairing. Enhancing my attention to detail is one of the most significant reasons for how nursing made me a better crafter. 

Patience

Residents, Nurse Managers, family members and patients will test your patience daily and remaining calm and composed is a fundamental skill that nurses develop throughout their entire career. Selling crafts in the age of social media requires similar patience. Unhappy customers can leave an unpleasant review, even something happens out of your control, such as the delivery time. I’ve found that years of developing patience through nursing helps me to reach out and try to find resolution, without typing something I might regret. Because typing is SO much easier than verbal face-to-face, right? 

Self-Care

Nurses are notorious for pressing on, taking that extra shift, staying late to help, and then working their second job at home. This is physically, emotionally, and mentally demanding and leads to errors and burn–out. As a crafter, I am constantly making for others and staying up late to finish orders or to make new designs and files. I often find it hard to sleep because of the next idea I am thinking about. This can also lead to exhaustion and neglecting my duties as a wife, friend, mother, and to myself. Prioritizing self-care can be difficult as it is often at the bottom of the day’s checklist.  

Being cognizant of what your body and brain need is the first step. In early 2020, at the height of the Pandemic, it became easy for me to promote self-care and identify a something that was missing in my new life as a crafter. As orders slowed down, I found something else that filled the void in my heart and head. I started making ear savers for masks, they relieved the pressure from the straps on the ears. I raised money on social media for supplies and made over 3,000 ear savers. They were given away to hospital workers, firefighters, veterinary technicians, dental workers, VA facilities, home care workers, and anyone who wanted them. For me, this was self-care; I was able to create something that made me happy and filled my desire to give back, something that I missed after 20 years of military service and being out of the hospital. I also took a hot bath every now and tried to go to bed earlier. You need to find what works for you and continue to focus on yourself first so that you can better care for others. 

You are a passionate, caring, instinctual, and cerebral nurse. You have done more for others than they are able to do for you. I’ve discussed how nursing made me a better crafter, but these skills listed above make you better at everything you do, whether it be a parent, friend, athlete, listener, or crafter. It has made me that way and I appreciate having had these skills for 24 years before I started my crafting endeavor. So, whatever you want or plan to do next, you WILL be successful because you are a NURSE.

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