What's the saddest thing you've seen in your career??

Published

How did it affect you and how do you cope with emotionally challenging situations?

Specializes in Med Surg, Ortho.
A stillborn, perfectly beautiful baby girl who was naked on the counter in the dirty utility room. WTFreak??? Whooooooo put her there????

A little girl with an astrocytoma, who wrote me a poem with backward letters.

A teenage boy with pectus excavatum.

Quads. Nurses who c/o about them requiring too much time and work

On and on. inmates in jail who never really much chance to do right and the guards who mock them, mentally ill and all their suffering and those who don't understand them.

God help us all.

It affects me by making me sad, by growing my resolve that God is good and allows stuff to happen that we don't comprehend.

:crying2:

Up Vote Up Vote ×

We had a teenage boy on our floor who was a failed suicide. He had tried to hang himself in his closet but family had found him before he died. They managed to keep him alive, but he was already brain dead. The family refused to believe he was truly gone, and his aunt would sit in his room and talk to him about how he was going to get better and all the things they were going to do. It was so tragic. They ended up discharging him to live out the rest of his days in a nursing home. I will never forget his face. It was such a waste of a young life...

Up Vote Up Vote ×
Specializes in CTICU.

Nothing I'd want to repeat. How do you deal with it? You have to have the view that **** happens and just get on with it, while providing the best care you can.

Up Vote Up Vote ×
Specializes in Burn, CCU, CTICU, Trauma, SICU, MICU.

16 y/o kid - the son of our ER attending. hung himself in the house. dad found him, cut him down, attempted to save him - did a thoracotomy in the house with a kitchen knife to do cardiac massage. got the kid to the unit, worked on him forever... let dad help run the code. he bled out... and you could hear his mom sob when she came in.

28 year old CF woman in with for a dbl lung transplant. husband, young child. acute rejection. they all agreed they wanted to withdraw care - she was cognitively with it. they brought the child in and mom, husband and child had a tea party in the hospital bed, wrote letters and drew pictures. husband, patient and child laid in bed together, once everyone was asleep, we removed the vent and she died in her sleep, in the hospital bed with the daughter and the husband asleep in their arms.

heartbreaking.

Up Vote Up Vote ×

I think the saddest thing I've ever seen in my career was a patient that I had that passed away on the Oncology Wing I used to work at. He had never had children, never married, and had no living relatives. Working in Oncology, after a while, the scene of grieving families becomes a common sight... but watching a little frail old man pass on alone.... it is very sad.

We would usually wait for a few hours after the patient died (so that the family could come in and grieve with their departed) before we did the post-mortem care. But I felt almost criminal when this man was gone, and the post-mortem care was initiated so quickly. Of course, it made sense in a way. But not to my heart.

In contrast, I once had a daughter of a patient who passed away on the Oncology Wing INSIST that she do the post-mortem care WITH me. In all my time working there, I had never had a family member participate with this. I guess it can kind of become routine in a way... doing the post-mortem checklist like a robot. But when the daughter was there, bawling through the whole process, even asking me to open up the body bag one last time (after we'd taped it all up) so she could say goodbye and kiss her mother one last time... Oh, man.... I had the hardest time keeping it together. There was so much love and pain in that room.

Family and love is a powerful thing.

Up Vote Up Vote ×
Specializes in ICU.
Little old people who really should be DNR, but who are Full Code per the wishes of their family members. Being coded is not a nice way to die.

I agree this is bad! WHen you have granny who is 95 yrs old, with a peg tube, on a vent, levophed AND getting dialysis.

Up Vote Up Vote ×
Specializes in ICU.
i have seen many sad things in my life...and my job... but there is one thing that i will never forget.... i was working flight.. and staff ER.. our hospital utilized us when we were not on a flight to work the department... anyway...

we got called for a major mva.. we took off... got to the scene and there was a family of 3 in the car that had been plowed by a drunk truck driver..

the dad was pretty much DOA. the mom was a mess but alive.. and the little girl just had a bad tib/fib fracture.. we flew the mom and 5 yr old girl back to the hospital... after we got there we were doing some very crazy things trying to save this mom... she was a train wreck.. at the same time.. we were taking care of the little girl in the next room... well.. long story short... the mom didn't make it, and the father was already gone.. they were from out of state just on vacation.. i was the only one that the little girl trusted cause i kept her calm during the flight.... anyway... the doctor would not talk to the little girl and tell her what was up... made me do it.....

i had to tell this little scared beautiful little red head green eyed girl that her parents were dead and that it would be over a day before her grandparents would be there.. she was very scared... she had to have surgery on her leg and no family or anyone she knew in the world there except for me....

well... i stayed w/her... i even scrubbed in on her surgery... i helped her wake up in the PACU... i transported her to her room.. and i stayed w/her until her grandparents showed up that next afternoon.... it was very very sad...

but... on a better note...

that little girl is still one of my friends...we still keep in touch.. she is going to college studying for med school... she is one of my best friends... and she has recently asked me to walk her down the isle during her wedding in a few months!!! :)

:cool:

This makes me want to cry. When you stayed with her, that was heroic. You didn't have to do any of that, and most people wouldn't have. A lot of healthcare workers don't want to get involved emotionally. But you realized that this little girl needed you. You did a wonderful thing! But you already know that! :)

Up Vote Up Vote ×
Specializes in medical surgical ward and operating room.

hello everyone!!! im very thankful that i had a positive outcome when it comes to my career here in the philippines i had good and bad experiences,if you become close with your patients thats the time you will know that they carry heavy problems and of course you will be affected...dying patients is a very sad scene for me....:cry:

Up Vote Up Vote ×

The saddest thing I have dealt with. A little baby who was dying from a devastating congenital heart defect. Her family didn't want to be there for her death, they were barely there for her week long life. On her last day on this earth, I held that baby next to my heart my entire shift and talked to her, because nobody should die alone.

I also had one of the proudest moments that day, my coworkers, understanding the situation, took care of my other patients so I could hold this angel and took turns holding her when I had to do something else. I love my unit and my coworkers.

Up Vote Up Vote ×
Specializes in LTC/Rehab,Med/Surg, OB/GYN, Ortho, Neuro.

Being w/ my best friend as she miscarried multiple times. How I hated the fates and the medical community that nothing could be done to stop any of them.

Happy to say that my Goddaughter will be celebrating her 5th birthday this year :heartbeat

Up Vote Up Vote ×
Specializes in ICU/Critical Care.

delete

Up Vote Up Vote ×
Specializes in school nursing, ortho, trauma.

Saddest thing as a nurse was having a 17 yo boy on my unit who had fried his brain after a weekend of binging on drugs. Mom brought in pictures of a vibrant young man with the world as his oyster and so many opportunities. The young man in my care now needed round the clock care and his mental capacity dropped to that of about a 3 year old.

Saddest thing as a firefighter was fighting a car fire and finding the body of a little girl in the back of the car. It's an image i'll never forget - but an image i refuse to describe to others. I carry that yound girl's memory with me every day.

Up Vote Up Vote ×
+ Join the Discussion