Nursing & Caring
Nursing & Caring is a collection of memoir art quilts designed and created by Terri Pauser Wolf, RN, MS about her 20-year career in nursing. The series illustrates experiences from nursing school student to experienced nurse and gives viewers a peek into nursing and oncology care. Quilt number one was created in 1997 when Terri started nursing school. The eight additional artworks were from June to December 2022. Each quilt takes about 20 hours to complete.
The series consists of nine art quilts and is can be loaned for an exhibition at health institutions including medical facilities, headquarter offices, educational institutions and conferences (see Exhibition info below).
Terri also offers workshops with the memoir art pieces and discusses art making for self care and storytelling for health care professionals. Use the contact for below for inquiries.
House of
Caring Spirits
House of the Caring Spirits represents nursing students excited for the opportunity to care for patients. The background features torn fabric strips woven to show the caring encounter I had with Elmer, an 87-year-old client with Alzheimer’s disease, who I met weekly at an adult day care center. This nursing school clinical focused on coming to know our patients without collecting medical data. My client kept asking about when he would go home so I used house imagery in the quilt. The ten small houses represent the 10 caritas factors identified by Dr. Jean Watson, a nurse scientist and researcher and expert on caring. The color scheme of purple and yellow is complementary on the color wheel and means the colors complete each other just like an authentic caring relationship is completion for both the nurse and patient. This is the first art piece in the Nursing and Caring series and was completed in 1997, my first semester in nursing school. This artwork’s design became the launching point for the series of nursing memoir quilts made in 2022.
Code Blue
Code Blue expresses the adrenaline rush of responding to the room of a patient who has stopped breathing or heart is not beating. Code Blue is announced over the loudspeaker so the code team can rush to the bedside. The artwork represents the franticness of the emergency with the caring spirits moving quickly, and the bubbles a hint to the oxygen the patient needs. The lungs are made to look like an x-ray using a sun print fabric called a cyanotype.
Red Shoes
Red Shoes symbolizes an experience I had with a critically ill three-year-old boy during a nursing clinical in a pediatric intensive care unit. His mother placed a new pair of red shoes on a shelf over his bed, and to me, the shoes were a sign of what we were doing—getting this boy better so he could wear those shoes. This important story in my nursing career is chronicled here [link].
In Memory
In Memory reminds us that despite all efforts some patients do not survive their cancer diagnosis and treatment. This textile artwork is created in memory of the patients who died and the family and friends who grieve them. This piece started with the central panel that was painted using stencils. A story of patients who died began to emerge from the cloth. The broken circle image represents the devastation of loss. Strips of word fabrics framed the painting and serendipitously, the word HEAVEN showed up in this random strip of fabric that had been in my scrap pile and now borders the central image.
Infusing Hope
Infusing Hope represents the story of my nursing career that was spent in chemotherapy infusion rooms. My patients had one thing in common—they had hope that the chemotherapy would give them back their lives. The background is stenciled with the names of drugs that were infused into patients. Many patients survived and cancer defeated a few. I loved oncology nursing because I came to know my patients on their many visits for chemotherapy. Patients infused the treatment rooms with hope for a cure or a remission and we wanted the same for them.
Nurses Eat Their Young
Nurses Eat Their Young is based on this often-cited phrase within nursing. At first I thought it was hyperbole. I was confident as 40-year-old entering nursing as a second-career nurse that I could handle myself with senior nurses, as I had career experience in the corporate world. Instead, I came face-to-face with this attitude on my first job and I observed it happening to colleagues. There is a vast amount of academic research on this topic that is sometimes called lateral bullying or lateral violence. Different theories have been proposed as to the cause including the stress of the work environment and the hierarchy of medicine. As my nursing experience grew and I trained staff, I worked to flip this around. I asked staff to give the trainee the same caring as they did with patients. The theme for this quilt may be difficult for some, but it is important to know all the aspects of this important profession, if we are going to make a difference for patients. The quilt has the hope in the yellow background while the caring spirits are being dismantled by the senior nurses. Word fabrics represent the politics of creating change.
After Mask Making
After Mask Making is an abstract art piece created from the scraps after I made cotton masks for friends and family members in the early days of COVID-19 when masks were in short supply. Wearing masks is a normal part of working in health care. We need masks, face shields, gowns and gloves to administer chemotherapy or for procedures. The masks protect our patients and staff. Just as COVID-19 inserted itself into our lives, so did this quilt into the series. Each block in the quilt is a reminder of the precarious nature of health and the need to be careful. It also represents a stressful time for staff in health care facilities, including cancer centers. Patients learned of their diagnosis alone as family and friends were not allowed at appointments. Cancer surgeries were delayed, and some patients were diagnosed with more advanced disease because screening clinics were closed or on limited schedules due to the pandemic.
Caring and Connection
Caring and Connection completes the series with its message of caring and the patient-nurse connection. Dr. Jean Watson, a nurse scientist and founder of the Watson Caring Science Institute, inspired my nursing practice since I first learned of her theories in nursing school. Dr. Watson’s theories show that true caring is beneficial for both patient and nurse. [link to WCSI here]. This quilt brings back the woven background from the first two quilts, but the colors are more harmonious. Nursing expertise and confidence grows over time so data and charting moves to the background. The circle image returns in this final quilt. The overlapping rings represent the patient-nurse encounter, and the rings are equal sized to demonstrate that caring relationships are mutual. The center imagery is surrounded by black to show contrast and the forces that are pushing into the caring experience. These include financial pressures, administrative agendas, insurance priorities and politics.
Lenore's Story
Lenore’s Place was completed during nursing school and summarizes the time I spent with a family during home health clinicals. The imagery represents a household with many medical issues and poverty. They lived on a property with apple trees, but the bounty was out of reach for many reasons including physical disability. The family's Cocker Spaniel dog was the one uniting presence in the household. He went from room to room visiting each family member as my patient, her husband and adult son lived out their days in separate areas of the home.
Brain Hemorrhage
Brain Hemorrhage is a series of three small quilts that I made after I experienced a brain hemorrhage while vacationing in the Colorado Rocky Mountains. A bad headache sent me to the emergency room and a CT scan showed bleeding in my brain. A medical helicopter came for me in the middle of the night, and I was transported to a hospital in Denver. The hemorrhage was small, and no treatment was necessary. It was a terrifying experience that I processed in fabric and thread on my return.
First Year
First Year shows the transition of nursing students to first-year nurse. The woven background shows some of the yellow strips from the first quilt replaced with data, charting and information overload. This artwork reveals the overwhelm at being a novice—the caring spirits being split apart as they bring their caring and beginners’ skills to the health care system. The houses are empty showing the disconnect between the caring dream of the nursing student and the reality of working in the health care system.
