05/09/2019
For you:
In honor of Hospice nurses this Nurse's Week.......💚💚💚💚💚💚💚💚💚💚💚
Typically nurses SAVE lives. Then, there are the nurses who DON’T save lives. These exceptional human beings deserve to be acknowledged, as their roles in the medical field are not often highlighted enough.
These are the nurses who are experts on death; the nurses who don’t thrive on adrenaline of trying to revive a coding patient, but who actually anticipate death and help navigate the unique and often tumultuous journey toward end of life for millions of people everyday.
In no other area of nursing can nurses connect with people like they do with patients who have been giving the soul crushing diagnoses of a terminal illness. These nurses get to be part of someone’s last days, hours, minutes and seconds on this earth. They witness last breaths for a living. These nurses have the ability to take away someone’s suffering as they prepare to say goodbye for the last time. These are the nurses who listen to someone’s chest cavity knowing that the only thing they will hear is absolute silence. It’s that same nurse who looks up from that quiet chest to hopeless, or sometimes, hopeful families and confirm that their loved one is gone.
These nurses are a different breed of compassion, honesty and strength. They fall in love with people who are in their most raw and vulnerable states of themselves. They carry the onus of telling people or their families that they are, in fact, dying and that they will not get better.
These nurses are challenged with reworking what the basis of their nursing education is, in trying to heal somebody’s spirit and not so much their body.
These nurses work hard to acknowledge the mind, body and soul of this unique demographic, an wear many hats for many hours. They cry, and laugh and sing and dance with their patients knowing that their time is limited. These nurses possess a certain finesse and confidence in having those difficult conversations that most shy away from.
These nurse carry the weight of life and death in their heart everyday. They push aside their own emotions and values to ensure that their patients needs are met.
So, no. Hospice nurses do not save lives, but they optimize and enrich the quality of life when life is limited.
Thank you to all the beautiful and amazing hospice nurses I know and work along aside. I am constantly learning and growing from the love and support you give me each day. We are a special group of people and I am so blessed to have the opportunity to be part of something so extraordinary everyday!
