Losing a family member treated in your own unit...has this happened to anyone else?

Ruby Vee, BSN · Feb 7, 2017

I've been a nurse for two and a half years but with only a year and a half of bedside experience. I've been a workaholic since the start of 2015, juggling three jobs, plus my family, plus part time school for my BSN. Everything was actually fine if a bit hectic--until last year after Thanksgiving. My dad got sick while he was living in another country, but managed to survive poor conditions during two weeks of hospitalization there, and then even managed to fly back home to the States. He was still in terrible shape when he arrived and got taken straight to another hospital here. While inpatient, he looked stable. Through bad luck and miscommunication, dad ended up not being able to go home on discharge due to dialysis treatments. Instead he got transferred to my hospital, which I found out too little too late. My hospital's got a reputation, some of us do our best despite the constant short staffing, but some others on the staff don't and as a result all too often, things happen. I tried to keep him from being transferred but the CM at the other hospital was resistant. I tried not to panic, formed a plan with my siblings to take turns monitoring dad, and to get him out ASAP. But again, dialysis treatments hampered us. Not to mention aggressive interventions implemented at my hospital that kept him there even longer. But to their credit, I saw some staff giving my dad more attention due to him being my dad. I didn't ask for it as everyone there is overworked and it's not something I'm entitled to just because I'm a nurse there, but I appreciated it.
In the end, was able to get my dad out, but two days later he died in ICU in a different hospital. Respiratory failure, septic shock, ESRD. ER and ICU docs said he was in fluid overload, in hindsight siblings and I suspect not enough fluid had been pulled during HD though he had TPN running and constant abx. I had planned to have him home with me, but things were not coordinated in time from all sides, and I can't help feeling I should have taken more time off my jobs to monitor everything. Just countless regrets on my part, and guilt. I can't bring myself to even think of going back to work. I blame a few of the people (two MDs, HD nurses, one of the charges) as much as I do myself. I should have advocated for my dad more and they should have paid more attention. Can't help thinking if I had more experience as a nurse or was quicker to spot problem signs, or maybe I didn't worry enough? To be honest, my siblings and I all felt that he was on borrowed time because of how sick he was. And yet how quickly he died shocked us all. As a nurse and his daughter, I think I might have failed him.
Hopefully, someone here can share a similar experience. I left the details vague because I haven't yet quit that hospital, though I plan to because just seeing the road that leads to work makes my chest hurt and my eyes tear up when I think that my dad spent his last weeks there.
I would be grateful for insight from other nurses.

First, please accept my condolences on your loss. Losing a parent is tough under any circumstances.

I would be very surprised if your father did NOT get special attention because he was your father. When the family member of a colleague is hospitalized, they are always a VIP. My husband, a flight nurse, is well known in most of the EDs and ICUs in our area -- consequently I was always a VIP when hospitalized. (Too many hospitalizations in the past decade, but I digress.) Even though you didn't ask for or expect special treatment, everyone taking care of him at your hospital was going to work extra hard to give him their best.

I was the nurse caring for the nursing supervisor's husband when he coded and died. The supervisor -- a nurse I knew well and respected greatly -- was in the back of the room throughout the code, and she ultimately made the call to let him go. Years later, she shared that she knew we did our best, and that enabled her to come back to work after her husband's death and to continue to work as nursing supervisor over the ICUs. I cared for a colleague's wife, who survived. And I cared for a beloved physician who diagnosed himself with leukemia, arranged to be admitted to our unit on his own before telling anyone and subsequently died in our hematology unit. His wife, also a physician in our hospital continued to work after his death. A colleague's husband died down the hall in another ICU. She went to see him before and after each shift. She said "The first time I had to transfer a patient to that ICU was difficult, but I knew all the nurses and they were so good to me." She's still working within earshot of the room where her husband died.

When your family member is ill, you are in the position of being FAMILY, not NURSE. There is no way that you and your siblings can be omniscient and pay attention to every little detail and trying to takes away from your very important role as family. Please forgive yourself. It sounds as though you did everything you could to help your father -- regrets and guilt only add to the very real work of grieving. It sounds as if your father was already "on borrowed time" when he arrived in his home country. Sometimes patients just are too sick to recover, and it sounds as if that's where your father was. You didn't fail him. You did your best, based on what you knew at the time. His body just wore out and there's nothing you can do about that.

I had over 30 years of nursing experience when my father died in my home town hospital. I knew the nurses caring for him -- and if not them, I knew their parents, grandparents or siblings. I know that everyone did their best for him, just like the professionals at your hospital did their best for your father. My father had an MI and a CVA pretty much at the same time, probably from emboli related to undiagnosed lung cancer. He was too sick to get better. I knew it, my sister knew it and his doctors knew it. Even through her haze of Alzheimer's, I think my mother knew it as well. I am very grateful that my mother, sister and I got to spend some of his last moments with him, even though he didn't know we were there. No matter that I knew Dad was too sick to get better and no matter that I was grateful that he was allowed to die in peace and comfort, I had to grieve. That's very important work that you will have to do as well.

The most important thing you can do right now is grieve. Grief is a part of loss, and loss is a part of life. You have to get through it in whatever manner you can.

If you haven't been to your work to talk to your manager yet, please take the time to do so. You may find that once you've bitten the bullet and gotten to your work, you can look forward to working there once again, knowing that everyone there did the best for your father. Maybe that won't be the case, but at least try.

Again, I am so sorry for your loss. I hope that you are able to process this successfully and eventually move on. In the first year after my father's death, I cried a lot. But as the years have passed (eight of them last month), I find that I can remember Dad and laugh about the funny stories or smile at the happy memories. I still miss him, but remembering makes me happy now. I wish that for you.