We occasionally have patients or their relatives complain that the nurses seem far too jovial.
That we are laughing and joking around during the shift, displaying total insensitivity to the suffering of those patients around us.
Let me say to them, that for us it is important to take every opportunity to swing our happiness around our heads, to let it unravel in wild arcs until it wipes against the walls. To sling our humour at low angles, so it skips off the floor and splatters up like over-ripe tomato seeds covering a colleague or two.
We try to disinfect the surgical steel with our pranks, and tie-dye the sterile, white hospital sheets with our laughter.
And we do this because we know a great grief waits close by. Always.
A grief that will pounce without forewarning. A grief that will crush us with the weight of every child we have seen die, and roar in our ears with the memory of every person we have wrapped in plastic, and claw us open with busy sadness and drag us off to uneasy, restless nights.
Working 7P-7A shift at this moment in Illinois. Just lost a 17 y/o to what had to be a massive PE. Understandably the family is devastated. Just came across your blog. So True! It is the moments like these…that let me know w/o humor exactly how could we do this?
I just popped over from Rising Blogger to read your winning post. Congratulations on the award this post is fantastically written and gets the message across.
Post and comments all on target. At least in the firehouse the pranks and sick humor are kept more or less contained.
I have had the same experience as Sandy, and it was very hard to deal with on top of the stress of having my child in ICU (for the umpteenth time) BUT i also have to say that I agree wholeheartedly with this post. When I was at my most vulnerable and sad, the last thing I needed was to have to deal with someone else’s sorrow as well. I needed the medical professionals around me to be upbeat enough to remind me that life continues and this too shall pass. Happy nurses are a blessing!
I empathise with Sandy. It’s well known that due to the 24 hour operation of the ED and ICU, stimulation of patients during their normal sleep cycle leads to stress, and is broadly detrimental.
I find it hard to balance my need to keep my sense of humour and be dicreet in the the face of presentations of death, disfigurement, abuse and the effect of normal body functions (read vomiting and malena)on the whole ED. Nurses need to be able to talk between themselves and have the odd joke around like anyone else in any other workplace. We do it at the risk of being seen as insensitive or flippant and I guess that doing it quietly, keeps in line with discussing of confidential details. EDs are so open though, short of using Cones Of Silence, attempts at discretion are bound to fail occasionally.
We aren’t superhuman inspite of our superhuman feats and don’t quite posess telepathy. Until then we need to keep communicating but remain sensitive to the needs of our patients especially when you could expect they would usually be fast asleep. More so for the patients having to stay with us for more than 24 hours(which is so common.)
Thanks Sandy. A very good point.
I agree with what you wrote. The only problem I have is when my mom was in ICU, the nurses were really loud just outside her room. She kept waking up from the noise of them laughing and talking very loudly. Even in the middle of the night! I thought it was extremely rude.
I don’t think the nurses, or doctors for that matter, have to be solemn all the time, but they shouldn’t be disruptive to patients that need rest.
I’m not saying all nurses are like this, but every experience I’ve had at the hospitals here have been like the one with my mom.
Just wanted to present a patient’s side of the issue.
~Sandy G.
I dunno—I don’t cry when a patient dies. We don’t get trauma nor children though, so most of our deaths are, shall we say, medically indicated. Now our paramedics have a policy that they will spend up to 30 minutes resuscitating cardiac arrest patients in the field. If they can’t get a perfusing rhythm after 30 minutes, we never see the patient. I can say that after the 30-minute rule was instituted 9 months ago, I have not had a single person die on me for any reason, including cardiac arrest.
Another Amen.
Exactly.
Brilliant! Just the way it is around where I live too.
This is my first time reading your blog and I am awed. Our patients will never understand the need for a little laughter, a little normalcy, before the next all-consuming tidal wave of grief comes crashing down.
Amen to that.
Occasionally we get a complaint that we don’t smile enough, particularly when taking an inquiry or some such thing.
It just goes to show that it is impossible to win either way.
I agree with you 100%.
your writing is beautiful as your thoughts
Wonderful post! Thank you so much for sharing. And keep swinging that happiness around – and try to splatter Panda when you get a chance… He’s been in a bad mood lately. http://pandabearmd.com/blog/2007/06/03/curbing-health-care-spending-belling-the-cat-and-other-dangerous-activities/
Oh Ian, this is wonderful. I’m printing it out to hang up at work.
Eloquently written and so true.
Well said. And, I might add, beautifully written. You have quite a gift.
[...] Impacted Nurse explains it all. Couldn’t say it better. (via GruntDoc) [...]
You hit the mark square on. Well done.
I agree. If you let what is affecting your patients get to you, you couldn’t function at all. I’m linking to this.
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