Professor’s Comment:
The referencing and citing of scholarly work is mandatory to support the idea that is being presented in the participation discussion. ALL peer responses require an in text citation, a reference, and 6 or more sentences. References should be between 2018 to 2022.
Post 1:
As an LPN, my main responsibility working in acute nursing home was taking care of hospice residents until they die. Initially, I found the role overwhelming my emotions due to the strong bonds I had with my patients. Most elderly patients take nurses as part of their due to our frequent interaction with them on a daily basis. I joined the profession as a teenager and the bond created affected me but I came to overcome my fears as time moved on. Today, end of life has become more significant due to increased number of aging population (Hellander, 2019). It is normal for us as long-term care home staff experience to daily experience grief. However, there are several factors affecting delivery of care for old people thus making it difficult for them to deliver quality care to hospice patients. Nonetheless, ethical issues arising from improving patients’ long term using risky care and evaluation criterion are used to criticize care after patients’ death.
Nurses have a role to play in ensuring patient die their natural death. Conversely, for some the process of dying and fear of unknown makes grieving experience traumatizing. It is wise to say that we do not exist since no one knows where the dead go after dying. Nurses working in LPN are required to provide a balance by improving patient daily life quality and life sustaining care whenever he or she doubts patient character (Cuttell, 2018). In addition, research play a key role in enabling further education. Nevertheless, nurse acceptance and evaluation of individual care is influenced by family response after one is dead.
Reference
Hellander, I. (2019). Beyond Obamacare: Life, Death, and Social Policy. Social Forces.
Cuttell, J. (2018). Traumatic, Spectacular Prologues: AAA Players as Ethical
Witnesses. Transactions of the Digital Games Research Association, 3(3).
Post 2:
The experience of becoming a nurse includes dealing with concerns related to death and dying. The experience is not necessarily smooth despite this fact, though. Learning coping skills is necessary because encountering death is practically certain in any nursing specialty (Sinclair, 2011). People fear dying all throughout the world, which is why civilizations aggressively promote life preservation. Every person has a unique perspective on death that is shaped by their personal, cultural, societal, or philosophical belief systems, which also influence their conscious and unconscious behavior. Health care workers frequently encounter death and dying because they are painful realities of life (Hoehner, 2020). You’ll encounter death in almost every nursing specialty, and part of learning to be a nurse is learning how to deal with grief. When patients pass away, whether you knew them for 15 minutes or 10 years, it will be difficult and occasionally unpleasant, but it is a necessary part of being a nurse. Regardless of your level of experience or the number of deaths you have watched, I believe it will never be comfortable to watch a patient pass away. With time and practice, you’ll improve at controlling your feelings of sadness and elation as well as grow more accustomed to handling the circumstance. I’m currently employed in the medical-surgical department. I witnessed a really sad, unexpected, and untimely death during those critical moments when many individuals were passing away with COVID19. The fact that the family members were denied the opportunity to say their final farewells in person broke my heart. We can only hold their hands during face-to-face and video calls and throughout their passing, but tragically, that is not enough. It has been too much to handle so quickly. Most of the time, we were mentally and emotionally exhausted, but we had to maintain a positive attitude and provide emotional support to families while also working very hard to keep our own emotional health. We really didn’t record that many deaths prior to COVID. My Christian faith conviction about dying gives me strength and acceptance regarding it.
References
Hoehner, P. J. (2020). Death, dying, and grief. In Practicing Dignity: An Introduction to Christian Values and Decision Making in Health Care. (Chapter 4). Grand Canyon University. https://lc.gcumedia.com/phi413v/practicing-diginity-an-introduction-to-christian-values-and-decision-making-in-health-care/v1.1/
Sinclair, S. (2011) Impact of death and dying on the personal lives and practices of palliative and hospice care professionals. CMAJ, 183(2),180-7. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/21135081/
Post 3:
Facing issues that relate to death and dying is part of any nurse’s experience. This fact, however, does not mean that it is a smooth experience. In every nursing specialty, coming across death is almost guaranteed, hence the need to learn how to cope (Sinclair, 2010). Everywhere in the world, people fear death which is why societies strongly advocate for the preservation of life. As individuals, we have our own attitudes toward death influenced by our personal, cultural, social, or philosophical belief systems that shape our conscious and unconscious behavior (Peters et al., 2013). Death and dying are bitter parts of life’s reality; it is also a common experience for healthcare personnel (Grand Canyon University, 2019). In just about every nursing specialty, you’re going to come across death, and part of Learning to become a nurse is learning how to cope with loss. Whether you knew them for 15 minutes or ten years when patients die, it will be hard, sometimes painful, but it’s part of the job of being a nurse. I think seeing your patient die is never going to be easy, no matter how experienced you are or how many deaths you have witnessed. As you gain years of experience, you’ll become better at managing your emotions and grief and more comfortable dealing with the situation.
Working in the ICU has helped me to grow in many aspects such as emotionally and professionally. After experiencing a lot of deaths, I learned that I needed to detach myself emotionally from the dying process. At the beginning of my career in the ICU, I used to feel impacted by the death of my patients. I was not able to disconnect my mind from work once my shift was over. Concentration in the care of my other patient was also another negative effect of dealing with continuous exposure to death. I believe that after a while, unconsciously my mind started to cope with this normal but painful process. I do still feel very empathetic about any situation regarding this topic, but I have learned to remind myself that this is my profession, not my personal life. My career is to care for people and the grief I feel is because I did the best I could to provide the greatest care. Constant exposure to the death of people has provided me with the knowledge to not take my job into my personal life. Being exposed to death constantly and taking it personally, could arise mental issues such as anxiety, depression, and becoming desensitized about the patients. There are other patients that need and depend on my care, and still have many opportunities to remain in this precious world. I will not say my experience with death has gotten easier or harder, but rather I have developed a way to cope with this plight. Additionally, I have learned to accept the cycle of life that at times can be difficult when dealing with a certain population such as the younger. Reminding myself that we will all leave this physical world and transcend to another even better.
References:
Sinclair, S. (2010). Impact of death and dying on the personal lives and practices of palliative and hospice care professionals. CMAJ, 183(2), 180-187. DOI: 10.1503/cmaj.100511https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/21135081/
Grand Canyon University (2019). PHI-413 Topic 4 Overview. Death-dinged grief. Retrieved from https://lms.ugrad.gcu.edu/learningplatform/user/users.lc
Peters, L., Can’t, R., Payne, S., O’Connor, M., McDermott, F., & Hood, K. et al. (2013). How Death Anxiety Impacts Nurses’ Caring for Patients at the End of Life: A Review of Literature. The Open Nursing Journal, 7, 14-21. DOI: 10.2174/1874434601307010014
Post 4:
I personally have not witnessed death in my work. Although, as a psychiatric mental health nurse I often talk to people who wish to die. Some are clinically depressed and have been suffering from depression for years, with continuous intrusive thoughts, and multiple attempts, and ECT is their last hope. Others will state they are suicidal for attention, these are often adolescents or young adults. These patients are often labeled as borderline. It may seem as if they are crying wolf, but it is a cry for help, and if ignored one day they may complete the action.
In a previous job, I worked as an in-home CNA for an elderly lady. She had a left-sided stroke which left her unable to move her right side, previously her dominant side, as well as with both Wernicke’s and Broca’s aphasia. She was able to speak a few words, “okay,” “yes,” no.” But often it was a complete word salad. She could understand simple questions but that was it. She had a Foley catheter continuously in place, was unable to dress or bathe herself, and did not know when she was having a bowel movement. Her daughter and two granddaughters came to visit twice a month, and her boyfriend usually came to visit every night for a couple of hours. She refused to do any physical therapy or occupational therapy. All she wanted was to sit in bed and watch TV. Try as I may, I felt this was no quality of life.
In my personal life, I have witnessed death. This may be triggering. When I was 14 years old, I went swimming with two friends. Living on Lake Superior I assumed everyone knew how to swim. As we swam into the deep end, I swam faster than the other two with one friend, Jeff, keeping up. And then Jeff turned around and the other was nowhere to be seen. “Bill’s drowning!” I heard him say. We both swam in the direction we thought Bill was in and we could not find him. I swam to shore and begged the few other people on the beach to run up the hill and call 911. It was 2006, no one had a cell phone. 911 finally came, Bill had now been underwater for more than 20 minutes. It took them 8 hours to find his body. I had begged and pleaded with God to not let him die, at that time I was still a practicing Catholic. As I entered my freshman year of high school I was harassed by other students, saying that I killed him. His mother blamed me, and I was not allowed into the funeral. I ended up switching schools, but their words still haunt me.
As years passed, there was more death. My mother’s late husband had always been a bit odd, but I didn’t know him very well. I watched him become irrationally paranoid over the course of two years. He began to become religiously preoccupied and believed the government could hack his computer. I was not a mental health nurse yet, and my mom, who was, was too close to see. In 2015 he completed suicide. I did not know him well, but it was heartbreaking to watch my mom suffer through that. I moved to Arizona to be there for her. I am still here.
Death has not been a stranger and it never gets any easier. However, these experiences have made me except it is inevitable, as it is part of life.
Reference:
Grand Canyon University (2019). PHI-413 Topic 4 Overview. Death-dinged grief. Retrieved from https://lms.ugrad.gcu.edu/learningplatform/user/users.lc
