Why I Care: Nurse Kristine Hafner

Watch Nurse Kristine Hafner share her story and passion for being a pediatric ICU nurse and taking care of her patients and their families.

Transcript

00:00

[UPBEAT MUSIC] I love taking care of people.

00:07

I helped take care of some special needs kids when I was younger. And I was in the hospital with them a lot. And I saw the compassion and, sometimes,

00:15

not-so-much compassion that were shown to them. And I knew that I wanted to give back to the world in some way on a larger scale.

00:21

My mom was a teacher for special needs kids. And I became the babysitter for a lot of these families. And I was hanging out with the Down Syndrome

00:29

kid or the three-year-old with a feeding tube. And that's what I was raised around. There's a lot of burden with being a pediatric ICU nurse.

00:39

Pediatric traumas are definitely difficult because you know that nobody's immune to these situations.

00:45

Anybody can get hit by a drunk driver, unfortunately.

00:52

I definitely get very close with my families. And then once you earn their trust, you are family to them. And you get invited to birthday parties.

00:59

And you get to see them grow outside of the hospital. And it's very rewarding. To take care of myself, honestly, I just

01:05

love hugs from my children. And I know that sounds cheesy. Those hugs, they kind of just erase the, sometimes, the sadness away from the day.

01:12

And I try to just be grateful for what I come home to every day.