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so a patient and i had a talk about heaven..( i dont know how we got on the topic) ... then suddenly 2 hrs late he went into vfib. we shocked him and he came back. for hours i thought maybe i did something wrong... but we have med scanning and he got only po k for a k that was low normal and a pudding snack... it has profoundly affected me... he came back and hes was fine... 100 percent baffled .. but fine. i want to call him at the other hospital we transfered him to ... is that inappropriate??
everyone has an opinion about this and they're all very different. i remember the very first patient i felt that i 'bonded' with. when i was leaving my shift and i knew i probably wouldn't see her again (she was going to a LTC facility) i stopped by to tell her goodbye. she hugged me and said, "it's people like you who make times like this bearable." she had tears in her eyes and i knew i'd miss her. i was telling a co-worker several weeks after that how i'd thought about the patient and i wished i could visit her, but it was inappropriate. the co-worker was/is a very experienced nurse and she didn't understand why i didn't go and see her. she said that she would. i still wouldn't do it. i knew then that there would be more instances like that in the future and if i wanted to keep my sanity (and my personal and professional life separate) that i couldn't strike up a friendship with every patient i 'bonded' with. i still remember the patient and probably always will. i'm sure she thinks about me too, and that's good enough.
I don't think you did anything to cause this guy to arrest. In my experience, it's not that unusual for patients to have some sort of premonition, if you will, before a significant event. My grandmother did. She was going in to surgery once and she told the surgeon, "You better watch out today. i'm going to throw you a curve ball." And she did. She collapsed both lungs and went into a coma, which she didn't come out of for 3 weeks. It all turned out well--she quit her 3 pack a day habit while she was sleeping. And she lived another 20 years.
Early in my career I worked on a cancer ward(back in the 70s.) Death in the night was not uncommon. One of the reasons I liked working nights was that patients often wanted to talk about stuff and some of them did seem to know when the end was near.
GilaRRT
1,905 Posts
The patient was transferred to a different hospital, not simply a different floor in the same hospital. I think this creates an additional layer of complexity and it's better to let it go knowing you did a good job.