Not everything that we meet in the hospital we can talk about. And by the end of the day you will feel so upset and filled with melancholy. You might not sleep and you may say this is the worst day in my work . But you go home and you sleep deeply, you may go out with you friends to have fun. And the next day comes and another sad day may come.
❌ When you meet a 15 years old kid with a CRF ( Chronic Renal Failure ). He's so cute and is smiling while you are taking a blood specimen.
❌ When a 2 years old girl is kept NPO ( NOTHING PER ORAL ) and is crying for water. All I can give her as a nurse is a sips of water to wet her mouth and lips.
❌ When you meet a 24 years old young man diagnosed with a metastatic cancer spread all over his body. And you know he is not going to make it, but you still keep smiling and ask him "Are you a fan of Real Madrid or Barcelona", he smiles and replies "Am with Barca and we won yesterday the Claccico"
❌ When you see a mother coming every morning for her young daughter who has a congenital birth defect and she comes every morning for the last 14 years.
❌ When a patient is dying. All the family around are crying and there is nothing you can do .
❌ When a patient dies in your shift and you are the one covering him.
❌ When a patients comes in complaining from a severe headache and doctors finds out that he has a malignant tumor in the brain .The patients then asks you "Nurse what do my results show , what's wrong with me ?" You can't tell him because doctors restricted that until the relatives come and they talk to them first.
❌ When a patient comes with a 2nd degree burns all over his arms and chest .I was curious about how it happened and why he didn't run away from the fire ...... when I looked around his room I saw a wheelchair near the bed.. The patient was on wheelchair on two years from a car accident.
❌ When you one work in a cancer control centre and everyone that comes from patients , doctors, nurses and visitors are all sad and depressed. I wondered "Is it the cancer that have the people or the people who have cancer."
❌ When you meet a worker in the causality with an amputated leg and is having am infection in the site . He can't afford the treatment yet he was smiling and talking to me.
❌ When you meet a 9 years old pretty girl coming to receive a chemotherapy session.
This is life .. and this is became part of our life and we adjust and move on. Because beyond all this sometimes we are able to bring the smile to those faces and we able to change things. And about that worker with the amputated leg , we the nurses were able to collect the needed money for his medications and he received the health care required. And so is the end of the stories above some are sad end others are not .
Wow, that was fantastic! I will be a nursing student this fall and I have been very worried about how I will handle the emotional part of the job, as I am a very emotional person.
The first days u might be always feel sorry & sad for the patients .... , we are humans after all - but as you work and teh more you see , the more normal it becomes for you ... your body will adjust - HOW ? i don't know , i guess it's a physical mechanism we use to avoid getting hurt we ignore.. But we give all the nursing need and the care the patient needs ... crying and feeling upset becomes nothing later... You most concern will be nurses notes
I am not yet a nurse .. this is my last semester.. but this what other nurses told me .. I hope that other members can help you .
"I am in my pre-reqs right now, yes, and I was talking about the people that I talk to that assure me that all their patients will love them, management will love them, they'll have people taking care of drunks that aren't them, they'll never have to wipe butts, etcetc. I just sit there and laugh."
Hwaahahaha - Agreed. My favorite are the pre-nursing students who have opted to avoid working as an Aide because it is dirty work - man if you can't handle what an Aide does, wait until you see a stage 4 pressure ulcer, or deal with a spilled wound vac receptacle.
Or the first time someone who is dying of the end stages of AIDS lays on their button because they just don't want to spend another night alone in a strange place - and you can't make them comfortable.
Perhaps it is unkind for me to laugh, I found all of these experiences harrowing and I am supremely grateful that I was able to experience them all for the first time BEFORE nursing school started.
I am an oncology nurse in the USA and thank you for your insight. :redbeathe
How can you tolerate seeing the patient in such condition .. ? ITS SO HARD !!!
I am now in the Cancer Control Centre , just for our clinical.. and its so hard.. my friend 's patient died the other day from lung cancer and she was crying so badly.. so couldn't pass by the room he was in even...
When i asked the nurses , how can you handle all this ? They reply and say we got use to this .
Some of them worked there for 10 years , other 5 or 7 years...
They were asking me .. Do you want to work here after graduation ?
Am like i can't tolerate these couple months am here for training .. and you want me to work here .. !!!!
How can you stand watching people suffer? Because eventually, you will realize that it is not about you or your feelings, it is about what you can do to make the patient's situation more tolerable during your shift. And that is what's important. That doesn't mean you don't go home and cry, or feel sick for days about the things you see. However, you have to learn that suffering is part of life, without it no one would ever understand joy and happiness. And, your mission as a nurse is to make that suffering better, to the extent you can, while you are caring for that patient.
Will certain situations continue to haunt you? Of course. There is no getting around that, unfortunately. But you will learn to see the beauty in the way people approach the difficult situations they face. And, you will learn to be the advocate the patient needs...which is what your job as a nurse is about in the first place. Not saying it is easy, however...Thanks for sharing your thoughts. Writing is a good outlet, and makes for excellent reading. Keep writing---
i had a 12 year old patient once. i cant seem to stop crying (i tried) whenevr we talk.
he went to harvest mahogany branches after school, he'd sell this for sch allowance. unfortunately, he climbed,& stepped on a dead branch so he fell (approx.) 10 feet down.
and since it was about 2km away from his home, he tried his best to go home...
2 hours after, he no longer felt any sensation in his lower extremities.
the folks brought the kid to the hosp that night.
it happened on sept... & because they lacked money, he had surgery on november.
the boy is just 12 yo & he's now paraplegic.
his situation was so depressing, i still cry whenevr i remember him. a case of countertransference? maybe...
How can you stand watching people suffer? Because eventually, you will realize that it is not about you or your feelings, it is about what you can do to make the patient's situation more tolerable during your shift. And that is what's important. That doesn't mean you don't go home and cry, or feel sick for days about the things you see. However, you have to learn that suffering is part of life, without it no one would ever understand joy and happiness. And, your mission as a nurse is to make that suffering better, to the extent you can, while you are caring for that patient.
Will certain situations continue to haunt you? Of course. There is no getting around that, unfortunately. But you will learn to see the beauty in the way people approach the difficult situations they face. And, you will learn to be the advocate the patient needs...which is what your job as a nurse is about in the first place. Not saying it is easy, however...Thanks for sharing your thoughts. Writing is a good outlet, and makes for excellent reading. Keep writing---
Thank you Spenmom ! for those words, I will try to remember that. And its true that suffering is part of life... but yet i can't accept or even believe how there could be so much suffering that we will get acquainted with .. I mean seeing it .. and taking care of them... that is so strange !
Well i know when we work .. all that will be normal .. and we will adjust somehow.
Thanks alot for your comment.. and writing is the only thing that always makes me feel better and take things out of me when i can't talk.
i had a 12 year old patient once. i cant seem to stop crying (i tried) whenevr we talk.
he went to harvest mahogany branches after school, he'd sell this for sch allowance. unfortunately, he climbed,& stepped on a dead branch so he fell (approx.) 10 feet down.
and since it was about 2km away from his home, he tried his best to go home...
2 hours after, he no longer felt any sensation in his lower extremities.
the folks brought the kid to the hosp that night.
it happened on sept... & because they lacked money, he had surgery on november.
the boy is just 12 yo & he's now paraplegic.
his situation was so depressing, i still cry whenevr i remember him. a case of countertransference? maybe...
Oh ! I know how it feels like.. there are always some incident , or patients that we can't forget...
I am blessed to be a hospice nurse. It was my first nursing job, I was hired while I was a LPN in the RN program. Talk about scared to death, I knew I didn't want to work in a nursing home because I felt bad for all of those patients, nurses and aides.
I am grateful that during school I learned that death isn't always a bad thing, and that losing a patient on my shift wasn't going to devastate me. Granted, you have a different mind-set in hospice than you do in the hospital where you are there to help people get better. I've seen the 45 year old man with a brain tumor linger for weeks, his wife and 11 yo daughter coming in every day, all day and some nights watching him decline. Death is really not a bad thing then.
I love the nursing I do there. It is so much more than passing medications and dressing changes. I can sit and hold a patients hand and talk to them. I can listen to a family member who just needs to talk and doesn't want to feel guilty that "I just want her to go, I don't want her to linger. Does that make me a bad person?"
Thank goodness that you can do anything you want in nursing and there is a niche for anyone. Even those who don't want to "wipe butts".
CrazierThanYou
1,917 Posts
Wow, that was fantastic! I will be a nursing student this fall and I have been very worried about how I will handle the emotional part of the job, as I am a very emotional person.
Any tips?