She walked into the room and directly to the bedside of my patient.  She made eye contact, smiled, made sure the blanket was covering his shoulders.  She told him she was going to be his night shift nurse, and reassured him that she would take good care of him.  She winked at him and gently touched his hand. Then, the nurse taking over for me walked over to the corner of the room where our patient's wife sat.  She was crying, scared, anxious, had not gotten much rest, and had just made the most difficult decision in her life.  She had signed her husband onto hospice. The nurse got down on her knees on the floor in front of our patient's wife.  I'll never forget it.  She knelt on that filthy ICU floor, because at that moment the most important people in the world were her ... View Post

  I want to tell you a story.  It's a story about my friend - my MICUBFFAW, and how she influenced me, and my patient care. Several years ago our unit manager assigned each Registered Nurse a "Medical Intensive Care Unit Best Friend Forever At Work."  My particular MICUBFFAW and I just happen to still work on our floor, and I still tease her, "Hey - MICUBFFAW!" One day, I heard a story about my MICUBFFAW, and I heard it from a patient's wife.  I can't recall the details of this patient's illness or the circumstances surrounding their hospitalization.  But I remember the patient, I remember that he suffered from dementia, and I remember that his darling wife had the neatest Scottish accent ever.  She visited us several days after her husband's discharge and brought home made ... View Post