The man I took care of today walked into triage and was wheeled out to a funeral home. I talked to him. We started IVs, central lines, arterial lines, every vasopressor under the sun, a Heparin drip, we intubated, I titrated, inserted tubes wherever I had to and it was all for naught. He still died. I had to watch his wife stand next to him and hold his hand and sob. And I still came home with the feeling that if I had just done something a little different or a little earlier that he would have lived, despite what anyone says to me. I'm still sitting here in my apartment crying in my beer. It's days like this that I think maybe I'm not the kind of person who's supposed to be a career ER nurse. Time to get my transcripts in order.
Friday, October 15, 2010
I can't do this forever.
I've been entertaining the thought of going back to NP school next fall. I was talking to my husband about all this the other day after a rather exciting ER night with running around the unit giving emergent meds and saving lives and other such adrenaline charged activities. My goal ever since I started nursing school was to ultimately become an FNP- although I also thought I wanted to run a pedi clinic and now I'm pretty sure that's actually the worst job ever. After that particular shift, I told him I still wanted to go back to school but I was a little bit ambivalent because I thought I would miss critical care. And I will. But when I was saying that, I wasn't thinking about days like today.
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It's human nature to remember our failures more than our successes. Try to think about people you've saved and may not have realized it at the time. Sometimes we do everything we can and still come up short. It's not your fault. Please don't shoulder burdens that aren't yours. Take this experience and grow with it.
ReplyDeleteI cannot see the dishonor in moving on. We pursue education to better ourselves!
ReplyDeleteseriously. some part of you must have to die to keep on doing this kind of stuff ad nauseum. nurses have to be like the Hydra, right, and every time some patient breaks our hearts, we have to find some way to grow two back. i just had a ROUGH 6 12's in a row, and there is no way in Hades i'm working any extra's on my 8 daze off. totally need all that time to recover. anyways, cheers on the beer and hoping recover quickly. a good cry is good for the soul, right?
ReplyDeleteFrom one nurse to another....drink a beer for me. Cheers.
ReplyDeleteThat's the great thing about nursing - you could go back to NP school to do whatever, and still pick up a critical care shift every so often if you felt like it (and didn't mind staying in the RN role - I got zinged by that one time when I accidentally used NP judgement while working on the floor - not good). There are also lots of ER and critical care NP roles. Most of the ER NPs I went to school with ended up staffing the fast tracks. Not too shabby!
ReplyDeleteYou can have both worlds, become an NP in the ER. That is my plan.
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