Head Nurse: Sometimes you cry.
Lord, I’ve been there. We all have. This job is SO tough, in SO many ways.
Head Nurse: Sometimes you cry..
I love this part:
We all do our jobs with the belief that we are invincible. That is not true, of course, but being shown our inability to save every life hits hard. Eventually the belief in invincibility comes back, because how on earth could you do this job without it?
As an occasional member of the code blue team, I see this type of situation all the time. You can always tell who the primary nurse is. No matter how hard they try, the sense of panic, fear, and regret always show on their face.
I bawled for hours the first time my patient died suddenly. Even still, I’m usually fighting back tears, and always on the way back to my car.
Great story!
September 4th, 2009 at 17:58
Nothing wrong with those tears. Transference is a darn good thing, I don’t care what the books say.
September 5th, 2009 at 14:43
I agree – nothing wrong with the tears as long as they don’t get in the way of being a good nurse to your patient. Unfortunately, I’ve seen situations where the primary nurse had to leave the code (while we were still going “full steam ahead”) because she was getting too emotional. Letting her emotions get in the way left me, and the rest of the code team, in the lurch because as the ER doc walked in and said “what’s the background?”, none of us had the answer because the primary nurse had left the room.
September 5th, 2009 at 20:37
When my patient is crashing, I find I’m so focused on what’s going on, and there’s so much adrenalin surging through my body that I don’t have too many emotions. However, as soon as it’s all over, all the emotions all come crashing in at the same time.
On the other hand, as the years go by, I find codes don’t affect me quite as much.