Leave things better than you found them was a lesson I was taught as a nineteen-year old college student during my study-abroad experience. That, along with celestial and non-celestial navigation, how to sail a 125′ Topsail Schooner, how to survive a Force 9 gale off the coasts of Labrador and Newfoundland, how to identify a multitude of sea creatures—including a 70′ Balaenoptera musculus (blue whale), how to take depth soundings of a Newfoundland fjord while perched in the bow of a tiny dinghy, and how to write and type a scientific report while rolling around on the high seas. Oh yes, and the poetics of sea shanties. All skills and knowledge and experiences that have served me well in life, reinforcing for me that value of experiential, immersion study-abroad programs.
But it is the seemingly trivial lesson of leaving things better than you found them that comes back to me most often, including this past week during the vicissitudes of the latest round of “let’s mess up our U.S. healthcare system even more.”
During my S.E.A Semester study-abroad program, Captain Carl Chase, our taciturn and highly capable and salty leader, sat us all down the first day of our voyage and explained that, in addition to our academic and sailing and galley work for the next six weeks, we were expected to find one thing we could do to do leave the ship in better shape than we had found it. He left it up to us to figure out what to do and then he would provide the materials and guidance necessary to complete our project. My project became the carving of a wooden knob for the battered galley teapot which had lost its knob. I liked to complain about the difficulty prying the top off the teapot and then realized I could—and should—stop complaining and do something to fix the problem.
Whenever I find myself complaining about things, like the ugly weed-filled concrete planters in the main courtyard at work, or the direction our country is going, or the direction the profession of nursing is going, or any of the myriad of issues I care about, I remember Captain Chase and the teapot knob and try to find some achievable improvement I can make.
And I know I am not alone in this effort. For instance, the Canadian nurse writer Tilda Shalof was recently highlighted in the Toronto Star article and accompanying video interview, “Medical Waste Becomes Massive Medical Art Mural.” As she prepares to retire from her decades working as an ICU nurse, Shalof turned the acres of brightly-colored plastic covers to various medical supplies into a beautiful art mural to adorn the hospital’s walls.