How often do you engage with or witness death in your work?
How often do you engage with or witness death in your work?
How often do you engage with or witness death in your work? How has this experience or the lack of it shaped your view of death? Has it gotten easier or harder for you to accept the fact of death? As you explain, include your clinical specialty.
The unit I am employed on seldom deals with death unless the patient codes and we are unable to resuscitate or is a DNR. I have worked in this unit for 7 years and the codes I have been involved in all had positive outcomes and the patients were sent to the unit. I have however, been with a few DNR patients who passed
ORDER NOW FOR AN ORIGINAL PAPER How often do you engage with or witness death in your work?
It is always hard to watch someone pass from his world into the next. I recently worked with a patient care tech who needed help in preparing a deceased patient for the funeral home. It was her first experience in dealing with this situation. The first thing I like to tell whomever I am precepting through this experience is to treat the deceased with the same respect that you treat your other patients.
I do not think that it ever gets easier to accept death, but as I’ve gotten older I view death differently. While I do not readily welcome it, I do not fear it. I believe that as God knows the number of hairs on my head, he also knows every other detail about me including when I will pass from this world into the next (Matthew 10:30).
I hope that when my time comes that I am with my family and that I am treated with the same dignity and respect that I treat my patients with.
I am a cardiovascular certified RN. I work in the area of the hospital which is supposed to be a short- stay cardiovascular unit. This is a unit where care is provided to non-critical chest pain, atrial fibrillation, congestive heart failure, etc patients. We do run a some cardiac drips that the regular floors do not run, but are considered staff RNs and receive no specialty recognition or compensation.
We prepare patients for outpatient heart Caths, venograms , fistulograms and bronchoscopies are performed in the bronch room located within our unit. We are also responsible for recovering these patients and on the rare occasion we pull arterial and venous sheaths.
Since the epidemic gripping our nation right now, we have been asked to care for increasingly critical patients including STEMIs as our ICU is caring for COVID 19 positive patients and administration is trying to keep those patients confined to certain areas of the hospital. This virus is taking a hard toll on every healthcare worker I know. How often do you engage with or witness death in your work?
References
Matthew 10:30. (n.d.). Retrieved from
https://www.esv.org/Matthew+10:30
How often do you engage with or witness death in your work? How has this experience or the lack of it shaped your view of death? Has it gotten easier or harder for you to accept the fact of death? As you explain, include your clinical specialty.
In my current role, I do not witness death, or often even engage with it. I am a clinical liaison director, and work in sales for a specialty infusion service that cares for patients with intrathecal drug delivery devices “pumps”. Prior to this role, as an RN in the field, and even as a regional manager, I did occasionally deal with patients who were at the end of life. Those relationships were very close and meaningful, as I performed the sterile refill procedure and programmed their pumps in their homes. It was interesting, and at times heart wrenching, to see the different ways that families and patients deal with impending death.
Many were at peace and actively helped others in their lives to find comfort, but for some that was not the case. One that sticks out for me was a young thirty something who was dying of ovarian cancer. She had a devoted husband who was trying to work and maintain some normalcy in the home, and a young son.
She put on such a brave face, and was pleasant, but understandably so disappointed that she would not see her son grow up or get to enjoy the life that she and her husband had planned. She felt robbed. No words that I could speak could change that feeling for her, but offering an ear to listen and respecting her wishes regarding her care was what I could give.
In my prior role in ICU I faced death often. The first patient that I lost left a lasting memory, and feeling. He coded while his family was in the room, and was the first patient that I worked ACLS on in my role. That was also the first time I cared for a patient’s body after death. That time with the patient was very somber, personal, and sobering.
The entire experience felt like slow motion to me, yet was going so fast. I had “felt” that he was going to go all that evening, but nothing really supported my feeling (labs, “numbers”, assessment, etc.). That taught me the lesson to really listen to that “extra sense” that I believe is God given.
I don’t know if I have arrived at death being any easier to face personally. I do know that I am capable of compartmentalizing it, as I have done in work many times. I can feel empathy, but guard myself from feeling the sympathy as much as possible when in the moment. When faced with my own mother’s death just a few years ago, I found myself compartmentalizing during the decision making, and then having a hard time just being a daughter and letting my guard down to just feel.
What I do know is that without the comfort and peace that being a believer gives, I cannot imagine facing the finality of death. Thank God for the hope that we have! “For I consider that the sufferings of this present time are not worth comparing with the glory that is to be revealed to us” (Romans 8:18)
Reference
The Holy Bible, English Standard Version. Romans 8:18 (N.D.) Retrieved from
https://www.bible.com/app
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