GeologistRN

What an incredibly poignant post, and what courage to talk about it. I can easily imagine myself in the exact same situation (I work in a MICU and wish withdrawal of care for at least 50% of my patients, witnessing their suffering and aching decline). Thank you for sharing your experience and making me feel a little less alone.

Wow, that is really great to hear, reassuring and inspiring. I hit my first refusal to do something yesterday: Attending ordered us to remove Fentanyl and Propofol drip from an ARDS patient artificially paralyzed on Vecuronium. The patient's lungs looked worse and the Attending wanted "unnecessary" fluids stopped. After several rounds with the Resident and Fellow we got the Fentanyl and Propofol orders turned back on (we had enough of both in the room to carry us over til the orders were reinstated). Realized later that neither the Resident nor Fellow wanted to carry out the initial D/C orders, but both were relatively powerless against their boss where we nurses were relatively powerful. Good feeling to think we can do some good, interesting to consider the strange roles we all occupy - advocating as best we can for the fundamental essence of human life. As best we can.

What a beautiful reply, what lovely thoughts. Thank you so much for tapping them out.

Anna - That is reassuring and distressing to hear. Have you stayed in nursing/found a field that makes more fundamental sense to you than ICU nursing? I do not want to be a quitter, do not want to leave a thing before I have really given it a chance, but I am really struggling with where I have found myself, and not sure the fundamental struggle with what ICU nursing is is likely to change any time soon.

Hi everyone, I am a brand new nurse, went straight into a MICU. I am about 2.5 months in (of a 3 month preceptorship) and struggling on a fundamental level with what this job is: It seems that all we are doing for 90%, perhaps 95% of our patients is prolonging suffering. We add tubes, we poke, we paralyze, we shock them, we wake them at all hours of the night...and for what? So they can die a couple of weeks later than they would have otherwise? A couple of months later? After having endured minimal, if any quality of life? In an unfamiliar environment, no windows, no plants, no sky? The last three shifts were the ones that put me over the edge: pouring blood products and pressors into a guy in DIC, and watching ever more blood pour out of ever more parts of him. And Nimbex, (along with Fentanyl, Versed, and Propofol) into a patient in ARDS with an ever-dropping pH and her daughter there hanging on every word, hoping for a miracle. Right now I am wishing I could give many of my patients and their families a priest's care, not the technologically advanced "care" I give. I would rather sing to them than stick them with needles and paralytics. How do I keep doing a job which, at least at the moment, feels like I do more harm than good? Watching people die in front of you all day (or night) and trying to keep them from dying is really, really difficult. It is excruciatingly painful, it is sad, it is terrifying, it is confusing, and I don't know if I can continue to do it. Any thoughts?