are these feelings normal?

[anon456, BSN, RN]

I am a new grad who was very blessed to be accepted into a new grad program in a PICU. I got a month of classroom training and now we are starting floor time with preceptors.

I am not sure what I expected to feel, but I guess I expected to have to work through my feelings more. We see sad cases that would make people cry to learn the details of, but somehow I am not moved to tears by caring for these patients. I am compassionte and I truly care, and I try to make the patient's day the best day it can be for them emotionally and physically. I play with them if they are able to play, I talk to them, and I spent some time at crib side rubbing one childs head so he could fall asleep.

And yet when I go home I am able to leave them at the hospital in my mind.

I do review in my mind after the shift what I learned, what I did well and what I could to better at. I do look up things about the patients and their disease processes and stuff like that, but I am able to remain somewhat detached.

The reason I am asking if this is normal is that I have gotten several comments from non nurses in my life or those who I meet and they ask me what I do for a living. Their responses are all the same, "I don't know if I could do that! I think I would be so sad about it all the time." I'm sad for the kids, but I am also able to remain emotionally distant from them. I just wanted to know what your feelings were when you were first starting in this area, and if this was or is normal. How do you handle what you see there? Does it ever get overwhelming?

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[elizanne]

I'm also new to the PICU, and I've had people make similar comments to me. I see it more as a "different strokes for different folks" type thing (I, for instance, would be really depressed if I had to work some other types of jobs instead of this one all day).

I'm similar to you in that I've had patients whose cases were really sad and taken really compassionate and competent care of them while not getting emotionally involved. So far, I've only gotten emotionally attached to one patient, but he was on our unit several weeks and died on my shift while in my care. We had all grown close to his family, and I think all of those factors together contributed to making his case more emotional than others. Even if you never have a case that makes you feel this way, I think you can rest comfortably in taking good care of your patients. It sounds like your making a point to learn as much as you can take the best care of your patients that you can, which is exactly what this time is for!