What Is The Shift You Will Never Forget?

Nurses General Nursing

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Hello,

I'm not a nurse yet, although I have been a Mental Health Tech and a PCT. I love reading your nursing stories on here.

I would love to hear about the moments (good or bad) in your career that changed you or that you will always remember. Tell me about that one patient that got to you or that made your day.

Have fun and discuss!

Two full term fetal demise' in one shift. We are a small 16 bed LDRP Unit at about 80 deliveries a month so we don't have to deal with fetal demise often, and very rarely full term.

I walked onto the floor and saw a handful a grown men sobbing. For this family it was their second loss of a child. The first just a year earlier when their toddler had a swimming pool accident. They were coming in for an induction and there were no heart tones when they went to hook her up. She said the last time she had felt baby was earlier in the morning before she came in. She had a perfect looking little girl and left empty handed just hours after she delivered. It was absolutely gut wrenching to watch her and her husband walking silently out of their room leaving their sweet baby girl in the bassinet. We swaddled her and the charge nurse walked her down to the morgue in her arms.

We were still a mess from that one when the other demise delivered.

Cried the entire way home from work!

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Specializes in Neuro, Trauma, and Psych.

Oh my linzjane88 what a heartbreaking shift! :cry:

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I have two. One was when I was at clinical and witnessed a pt. throw a PE. He went from being a walkie talkie to throwing up massive amount of blood, and dying. He went from laughing to dying all within 10 minutes.

Second one was when I saw a steronomy performed at bedside. Once again, this patient appeared to be stable then all of a sudden we were opening up her chest.....

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Specializes in ICU.
I have two. One was when I was at clinical and witnessed a pt. throw a PE. He went from being a walkie talkie to throwing up massive amount of blood, and dying. He went from laughing to dying all within 10 minutes.

Second one was when I saw a steronomy performed at bedside. Once again, this patient appeared to be stable then all of a sudden we were opening up her chest.....

Is would be one of mine. I was about 2 mo ths into the ICU when this happened. Nice man, lung CA 60 years old. He had a known embolus. They were waiting transfer out of our community hospital to have this procedure but there were no beds. The goal was to not let this guy cough. I was scared. It was night shift and he had been sleep soundly no coughing for hours. He was due for his codeine, and I saw him standing up to pee in his urinal, got the medicine, came back into the room to settle him him his bed and give him his meds. Nxt second blood out of his nose, coughing it up, he was talking asking for his O2 while this is going on until he went into vfib. It was horrific. He died. I was devastated. The hospitality told me he was a ticking time bomb and there was nothing that could have been done.

I'll never forget it. My coworkers remembered it for years to come too.

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Specializes in NICU, ICU, PICU, Academia.

On the bad side.......

Had a gentleman with head and neck cancer - advanced. He had a metal trach as I recall. Nice man. He was in ICU, and we were weighing him on the sling-type scale. Got him up in the air and the cancer eroded his carotid artery........

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Specializes in Cardiology.
On the bad side.......

Had a gentleman with head and neck cancer - advanced. He had a metal trach as I recall. Nice man. He was in ICU, and we were weighing him on the sling-type scale. Got him up in the air and the cancer eroded his carotid artery........

That is just about the most awful visual I can imagine.

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Specializes in NICU, ICU, PICU, Academia.

Mercifully, it was very, very fast.....

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Specializes in Neuro ICU and Med Surg.

I have a few memorable shifts:

The time I got the dead pt from the ER. She was not a DNR wither. We coded her got a hold of her family and they had us extubate her immediately. She passed away peacefully after that. The staff still tease me about it 6 years later.

The shift in the ICU where I had to meet my co worker in IR. I brought the pt back with her and got him hooked up to the ICP monitor and his ICP was 80. He was taken immediately to CT scan and we took him immediately to OR. He was in IR for vasospasam and he started swelling after and we had to take him to OR to remove his bone flap and release pressure. He never did walkout of the hospital. He ended up with a trach and peg and in a nursing home. I have no idea how he is doing now.

There is the day I walked in had an orientee and a pt who was a GSW to the head through and through. He was tachy for us all shift and febrile. Nothing worked to break the fever. We put in a cooling cath and the he got so cold he was brady. This kid could never regulate his own temp again. He went to OR to have a second bone flap removed. He eventually died in a LTAC.

I remember the shift we emptied out the unit. They took a nurse from us. We got 5 admits in 2 hours. We got one from OR, one from a sister hospital with a GCS of 5, one from Up North, one from another hospital who was a GCS of 3, and there was another admit I can't remember where they came from. They were mostly critical. I asked for a nurse back and was told no. If not for amazing team work we would have never handled it.

I remember the day I walked in and we were starting to get 3 admits right away. The first air lifted from a sister hospital and critical. Another from a different sister hospital, critical AVM rupture, and one from the OR who was GSW to the head. Suprisingly the GSW to the head was the least critical. I had to make room for all three of them. We had help from the supervisor to transfer out of the unit the ones who could go. If not for all our team work I have no idea how we would have handled the influx of all these critical patients.

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Specializes in Med/Surg,Cardiac.

Walked into my job one morning in the small hospital I worked for. Had an ER and a 20 bed med surg unit that accepted any age of patients.

Had a young child, probably 7, who was on telemetry. That in itself should have flagged that the small hospital was inappropriate placement. The kids vitals were terrible. He looked terrible. I asked the experienced noc nurse why that child was here. She just said because it was ordered...

As a brand new nurse, the only RN, I was at a loss. I called the pediatrician who was furious that the ER doc admitted the child to our unit. Ended up calling and getting the kid air lifted to the regional children's hospital. I also had 10 other patients and it was me and 2 aides. I was responsible for watching the monitor as well. That poor baby could have died and who knows when the last time a peds code happened at that facility.

I quit shortly thereafter. I couldn't believe the stuff they allowed to happen there.

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Specializes in long term care Alzheimers Patients.
Mine was my last shift with my home care patient. (I also work in PICU and care for her in both places)

I started caring for Elizabeth when she was just six months old, newly home from the NICU - trach, home vent and post-Norwood (the first of three planned palliative surgeries for hypoplastic right heart/ pulmonary atresia).

Three years later she had survived her other two surgeries (barely in the case of #2), a pulmonary hemorrhage, got off the vent and was doing well. She got decannulated and parents no longer needed regular nursing care.

I had never (obviously) heard Elizabeth's voice. It was my last shift - a rare afternoon shift so mom and dad could go out and celebrate their anniversary. I knocked on the door and mom let me in. From behind the couch- up pops Elizabeth - all smiles. She and mom worked with speech for two weeks on this- my greatest gift. Elizabeth said, "Hi Mary!'

PS: In the intervening year and a half, Elizabeth's mom has had a healthy son, and in a few months, my girl will start kindergarten.

Mary

That is so sweet.

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Specializes in family practice and school nursing.

Really stupid question...what does NOC nurse stand for?

My most memorable day was the 1st day of a summer school program with 225 special needs kids. We only had emergency contact information for some kids, really limited medical info , if any. Kids were coming to school with meds in their backpacks (against the law!) with no orders, etc. Total chaos. Trust me, the adminstrators of the program were told a thing or 2.

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I am getting so old. I just tiny snap shot memories and probably the details are somewhat inaccurate.

I was the night supervisor. Probably the patient, a young man, was brought in via ambulance code blue, full blown AIDS. He made it to ICU but it was just for comfort care, DNR, he was expected to die imminently. He died without further interventions, I stepped outside the ICU doors and a young man was there. I asked if I could help him, he said he was here for ______, how was he doing. I told him I was sorry but he had died.

I got the strongest overwhelming feeling that I was to give the man a hug. I think I even made a small move, stepped forward, to do so, but something stopped me? To this day I regret I did not give that man a hug.

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