Experiencing Death

Experiencing Death

Showing empathy to patients can be a powerful tool that can make one a successful practitioner, but it could also make the loss of life more painful (Lowey, 2019). I started working as an ICU nurse at the age of 18, where I used to see death almost on a daily basis. I would take care of residents who went on to hospice until their passing. Initially, I found it very hard for me since I could get attached to my patients. When you meet and socialize with patients every day in the care provision process, they become just like your family. It emotionally affected me at first, and since I was not mature enough, I was still in that stage of life in which I regarded myself as ‘invincible.’

After numerous encounters with deaths, I had to detach my emotions from the dying process to be able to think and act clearly and ensure the provision of good care to patients with specific health and medical conditions in the ICU, where most of them are in a critical state of life. What became more important to me was how I cared for these patients to save their lives, but not how the death or dying made me feel. However, I knew that it was important to keep a good relationship with the families of my patients – mostly unconscious – since they are the ones that I communicated with mostly concerned about the condition of the patients. I learned that comforting the families of the patients admitted to ICU or who passed away was an enriching experience. According to Lowey (2019), it is important that a caregiver does not show the patient’s family his or her emotional detachment on the death of a patient and instead shows empathy in case the patient passes away.

Reference

Lowey, S. (2019). Nursing Care at the End of Life. New York: Open Sunny.

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How often do you engage with or witness death in your work? How has this experience or the lack of it shaped your view of death? Has it gotten easier or harder for you to accept the fact of death? As you explain, include your clinical specialty.

Experiencing Death

Notes:
Hi, Please note my clinical specialty was medical ICU. I used to see death on an everyday basis from ages 18 and above.
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