Here's a feel-good post

[Peppermint_RN]

I am orienting on a hospice floor as a still-pretty-new-grad. The other day, my Coworker & I went in to give a resident a bed bath. This poor guy is in constant pain, even though he has a PCA pump, and it hurts when we move him. He doesn't say anything usually, just moaning & groaning in pain.

So, as we are rolling him over to clean his backside, I tell him he can hold my hand & squeeze if he needs to (and boy did he squeeze!) I held his hand the entire time we did the bed bath and kept talking to him to try to distract him from the pain.

The next day, when I went in to check on him, he held my hand, smiled at me & said "hello my angel". I almost cried. That little thing I did the day before, just holding his hand, made a difference. :)

I just had to share. I think it's a good reminder that sometimes something so little can mean so much to someone else.

[brillohead, ADN, RN]

I had a similar experience in nursing school. One of my assigned patients was getting a PICC line inserted, and she was a bit disoriented and VERY afraid, I'd even say she was terrified. Since my charting was done and my meds were passed, I had some free time available and I got permission from my clinical instructor to "observe" the PICC line insertion.

What I actually did was stand on the other side of the bed, holding her other hand under the sterile drape and talking to her the whole time. I explained what the PICC nurse was doing, and also explained what the PICC itself was (in her confused state, she thought we were going to be threading a huge needle in her arm and leaving it there -- no wonder the poor dear was so terrified!). And I also just chatted about the weather or whatever else I could think of to take her mind off what was happening on the other side of the bed.

I doubt she remembered me the next day, but I for the time that she knew me, I made her life just a tiny bit better. What a great feeling!