Unlearning the ICU
I have just started my career as hospice nurse following a 2 1/2-year stint in a medical intensive care unit (MICU).
I owe it mostly to a young patient. He was brave and sweet in the face of some terrible disease. He reached his hand out to me on what would become the last day of his life. His skin was soft and warm and I could feel the connection, trust, and faith he had in me. I am profoundly grateful that I did not have to betray that trust. He died peacefully.
Peaceful deaths are not usually the norm in the ICU. Code Blue deaths are violent: ribs are broken, patients are shocked with electricity. As a society we debate if it is humane for convicted felons to be shocked to death. Yet we shock our dying grandmothers and grandfathers every day. And they die anyway.
This is why I wanted to become a hospice nurse.
I want to help provide a humane, dignified, and peaceful death to the terminally ill.
So I've "drunk the koolaid". But as I had suspected, I have much to unlearn in becoming a fluent hospice nurse. My impulse to immediate action must be calmed. I must learn to become a community home-based nurse. I must stop talking in "ICU-speak".
People have asked me if hospice nursing is depressing, "because there is a 100% mortality rate". Well, life has a 100% mortality rate. Our society is great at denying that. In ICU I learned also, that there are worst things than dying.
Even on worst day at work, I remember my patient who reached out to hold my hand in the ICU, and I remember why I'm doing this. This one's for you, [patient's name].
I owe it mostly to a young patient. He was brave and sweet in the face of some terrible disease. He reached his hand out to me on what would become the last day of his life. His skin was soft and warm and I could feel the connection, trust, and faith he had in me. I am profoundly grateful that I did not have to betray that trust. He died peacefully.
Peaceful deaths are not usually the norm in the ICU. Code Blue deaths are violent: ribs are broken, patients are shocked with electricity. As a society we debate if it is humane for convicted felons to be shocked to death. Yet we shock our dying grandmothers and grandfathers every day. And they die anyway.
This is why I wanted to become a hospice nurse.
I want to help provide a humane, dignified, and peaceful death to the terminally ill.
So I've "drunk the koolaid". But as I had suspected, I have much to unlearn in becoming a fluent hospice nurse. My impulse to immediate action must be calmed. I must learn to become a community home-based nurse. I must stop talking in "ICU-speak".
People have asked me if hospice nursing is depressing, "because there is a 100% mortality rate". Well, life has a 100% mortality rate. Our society is great at denying that. In ICU I learned also, that there are worst things than dying.
Even on worst day at work, I remember my patient who reached out to hold my hand in the ICU, and I remember why I'm doing this. This one's for you, [patient's name].
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