Kimberley - Caring for Patients and their Families

Kimberley -







Both my mother and my mother-in-law were nurses, but it was my husband who actually encouraged me to make a career of it. He saw that I always stopped at accidents and was willing to help people, and he also saw that I wasn’t fulfilled in my job with a pharmaceutical company. With his insight, I decided I would go back to school, and the short period of unemployment would eventually turn into a good career for me. I’ve been a nurse for thirteen years now, and I actually enjoy coming to work.

I’ve done emergency and critical care nursing, and one of the hardest parts for me is when I lose a patient. Four years ago, I lost my 19-year-old sister in a car accident, and suddenly I had to switch to the other side of the bed. I became the family member of a patient; I was the one being pulled into the family room by the nurses who talked to us about withdrawing life support. Now I realize first hand how hard it is for them. I know the family needs to know the information, but it’s hard not to take their grief home with me and sometimes it takes a while to process.

If an 80-year-old man dies and he’s lived a great life, he’s surrounded by family members, it’s his time to go, that’s all right. The family is OK with it and the patient is OK with it. It’s the young ones you lose that become a little bit more difficult.

We help each other when a patient dies by coming together in what is called a debriefing. I was involved in a neonatal death, and a debriefing team was brought in to help us process. Things were done that probably shouldn’t have been – nothing to bring harm to the child, we just tried a lot longer than most would to try to resuscitate this neonate.“Your voice is calming. You were there. You told me exactly what was going on.” The child ended up dying, but a lot of staff kept coming to us and saying, “That was ridiculous. I don’t know why you did that. We never give those drugs in neonate. We never do that.” I felt judged and had heard enough! I wanted to say, “Okay, but you weren’t there. You didn’t have the father screaming in your head to do something. You weren’t in the room.” So the debriefing process was very helpful because the people involved knew their place. They didn’t do any Monday-morning quarterbacking. They comforted and supported us, which was so helpful.

On the other hand, there’s so much reward in this job, despite all the tough times. The other day a man came up to me at a baseball game and he said, “You’ll probably never remember, but you were the one that was over my head the whole time the doctors were taking care of me. Your voice was calming. You were there. You told me exactly what was going on.” It was really satisfying for me to hear that.

I’m very comfortable in my faith, but I’m also comfortable being with people who have different faiths or upbringings, and I’m willing to support them in whatever that may be. I’ll broach the subject, not force it on them, and listen if they want to discuss their beliefs. If not, that’s fine. I believe listening is healing. That’s all I wanted when my sister died. I didn’t want somebody to tell me that I was going be okay. I wanted somebody just to listen.

In my practice, family comes in. I’ve had family at bedside codes. I talk to them myself or I make sure somebody is talking to them and keeping them updated, especially if they don’t want to be at the bedside. I was always a caring person before, but there are times now when I can put myself in their shoes. I don’t say, “I know how you feel,” that’s belittling them. Instead I say, “You know, I lost my sister four years ago. I will not claim to know how you feel, but I know I’ve been in a place like yours. If you just need somebody to hold your hand, if you need somebody to listen to you, I’m there.”

A lot of people laugh at how many family members are at my bedside, and a lot of nurses try to push the family away. But family is important, because the patient is going to wake up to their own son’s voice, or to their own mother’s voice, and that’s part of caring for someone. I’ve sat with people who died alone, and they died alone because their family was estranged or whatever, but to me, anybody who’s at that bedside is family. Even if they’re not a blood relative, they’re family to that patient, and a lot of times that helps. It helped me when my sister died. We had thirty people in the waiting room, and all the nurses kept saying, “Wow, you guys don’t need social workers.” Everybody is going to be at different levels at different times, and everybody can comfort each other.

I learned a lot from the nurses who took care of my sister, and it changed my own practice. It’s important to be at the bedside, because that takes the stress off the family, too. I mean, are they going to remember a nurse who says, “You can’t come in,” or are they going to remember a nurse who let them be at their loved one’s side? I remember vividly the nurses who were at my sister’s bedside, and the ones I remember the most are the ones who said, “Come on in – even though there’s ten of you it’s not a problem.” They’re the ones I remember because they thought it was important. And it was.

Power Strategies: Humanity, Passion, Service
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