When you’ve been a nurse as long as I have, you’ve experienced loss.
Loss of a coworker to sudden illness. I can count on two hands and remember the name of each coworker. Whether it is from illness, or catastrophic illness, or accident, each loss wears at you a bit.
Loss of favorite patients. This happened more frequently as a med-surg nurse, or even as a CNA in a nursing home. Some of my favorite patients at the nursing home died suddenly or not so suddenly. Doing post-mortem care on a patient you have grown fond of is never a good time, but it is a memorable one. It is our last chance to care for them. The nursing home was their home and belongings had to be gathered and packed away. Often by the night shift staff. The death of a patient on the med-surg floor was different. Often there was family that were not present at the nursing home. The nurse has to navigate and validate their feelings of loss too.
Loss of a patient you don’t even know but are there at their end. This particular one involves them or their loved ones making a sacrifice of their organs at the end of their life. This is as solemn as it gets. And the life share staff don’t see the now body through to the morgue. They have lives to save with the organs that have been donated. This is the OR nurse’s job. It is the OR nurse’s job to remove the IVs and the foley and the endotracheal tube and to wrap them in a body bag, ready for transport to the morgue. Not unlike the post-mortem care on the floor, except there is no funeral home to come in with their special gurneys and take the body.
I believe the dead need to be cared for by people who are mindful of their dignity.
I believe the dead need to be cared for by people who give the them grace.
Loss of a peer that isn’t a coworker is a new one for me. Loss of a classmate that I laughed with and worried with and helped with concepts and was helped in turn. Loss of a cohort classmate that I had many, many, many conversations with in class about the concepts of that particular class is unsettling. Loss of a cohort peer that was close to my age just sits differently.
It is end of shift. Report has been given and we will do our best to honor your memory.
Rest well.
Dispatches from the Evening Shift 