Going South
I can tell you what I regret from my first experience with a patient who later passed. I’m a nurse, was working ICU at the time, and was freshly coming off orientation with about 1.5 years total nursing experience at the time, so not quite a rookie. Anyway, I had a patient one hour after my shift have severe difficulty breathing. After consulting the doctor, we decided to intubate and were getting ready to start the procedure.
The woman had widened panic in her eyes, and before we gave her a sedative for when she went out, I told her, “Don’t worry dear you can relax. We can do the breathing for you.” This seemed to calm her some, and then we sedated her and did the procedure. It started going south. Her pressure started dropping, even after we put her on a cocktail of medications. I sat in her room the entire time and did any charting I could at her bedside, since alarms would constantly be going off.
This went on until 2 pm, when the family came and decided to take her off the ventilator as she had a poor prognosis. She passed a little bit later. I will always regret telling her not to worry, that we would do the breathing for her. Because in the end, we couldn’t. I just regret that I couldn’t fulfill my promise to her. So my advice to any of the younger ones in health care, don’t make a promise you don’t know for certain you can keep.
Story credit: Reddit / PunisherOfDeth