The Death Of Nurses Deal With And The Coping Mechanisms That Are Most Common

One is to help the bereaved to develop their own ways of coping and the other is to ensure that their own difficulties, needs and attitudes relating to death and dying of their patients do not compromise their psychological well-being. It was noted by the same author that the psychological impact and after events prevalent in a critical care nurses’ working environment remains relatively unexplored. Michell (2010) also felt that repetitive exposure to resuscitative measures, end-of-life care needs, prolonging life by pharmacological and mechanical means and the continuous adjustment of these critical care nurses to this hostile environment, results in psychological disorders such as post-traumatic stress

On reading this article and identifying the study, there was a clear insight on how death and dying, and even improved health, impacted those nurses (Conte, 2014). Nurses, who worked closely with their patients, through the perils and suffering, culminating of death and losses, had grief not readily explored to enable that comfort zone (Conte, 2014).

It identifies studies that address the issue of having a variety of definitions for caring (Enns, 2007). This issue is relevant as it may vary the results of previous studies. The references are current to the article and well documented. The resources used are more for the definition of caring and to support the need of further research and not that of the specific topic of lamentation and loss expressed among surgical nurses (Enns, 2007). The fact that research on caring in many areas of nursing has been done, it is identified that there is a lack of research done on acute general surgical wards (Enns, 2007). The literature review examines different research designs used to cover the study of nurses’ caring but it does not examine the need to research further into the specific field of surgical nursing other then the lack of previous research (Enns, 2007).

Death is a part of life and eventually everyone on this earth will experience it. Nurses play an important role in death. Mourning the death of a loved one is something that almost everyone will experience in this lifetime because it is a natural response to death. Bereavement, grief and mourning are all effected by one’s culture, religion, the relationship with the deceased, personality, and how the person died.

Individuals enter nursing with a wide array of experiences in how they grieve the loss of someone or something. These experiences follow them into their career and express themselves in the way they grieve for the loss of a patient. Evidence shows that this has historically been inadequate and unhealthy. To prevent the negative impact that ineffective grieving has upon the individual the approach to the grieving process must change. In doing so nurses will become more emotionally and physically stable while going through these difficult times, ultimately helping the healthcare institution to thrive.

When one thinks about nursing, caring, empathy, and compassion come to mind. There exists a link, an unbreakable union, for nurses that "compassion fatigue is the cost of caring for others in pain" (Boyle, 2015, p. 49). Compassion fatigue (CF) and its impact on nurses are predominating problems in various Emergency Departments (ED). Nurses perform a number of procedures throughout the day; however, the essential item that they deliver the utmost is themselves (Harris & Quinn-Griffin, 2015). Nurses provide care, succor, kindness, and tenderness to patients, families, other nurses; support to doctors and advanced practitioners, and convey directions to medical technicians, nursing assistants, and other staff every day. Eventually, the nurse can have their internal well of compassion come up empty, leaving them with CF. Simply stated, CF is the inability for nurses to nurture patients due to secondary traumatic stress disorder (Hinderer et al., 2014). This study explores what is compassion fatigue and ways to alleviate it and prevent it from taking away the love of nursing.

Working as a home health aide has enabled me to assist patients without completely stripping them of their independence. My eyes were opened to understanding the different ways in which dying is handled by an individual and/or family members and friends. Watching “Wit” reminded me of work. The movie deepened my compassion and empathy towards what a person might be going through and the strength required both mentally and physically to make it through each day while suffering from an illness. Most times a patient can gain the strength to fight because they have a good nurse that is a part of their medical team. I am witness to this phenomenon. Nursing is a profession that allows one to both learn about the human body while incorporating evidenced- based practice to better care an individual.

Most nurses and health care professionals enter the medical realm to make their patients well and prolong the length of their life. In contrast, hospice nurses and their interdisciplinary teams aim to simply improve the quality of the remainder of their patients’ lives. The finite nature of hospice care means that hospice nurses specifically are exposed to a continuous cycle of loss without the opportunity to grieve appropriately. In addition, the empathy and compassion integral to nursing care can become overly pronounced in hospice nurses, making them especially at-risk of becoming too attached to their patients. These factors often result in physical, emotional, and mental exhaustion, a state known as compassion fatigue. Compassion fatigue (CF) affects not only the nurse’s quality of life, but also his or her job satisfaction and work ethic. This paper provides an overview and history of hospice care, discusses risk factors for CF, and examines its effect on nurses. It concludes with recommendations for appropriate ways to cope with CF and CF’s implications for the future of hospice care.

The Josie King story is truly unimaginable. I wish I could review her chart to better understand how she fell through the cracks. It seems hard to believe that the signs of increasing dehydration went unnoticed or even worse, were viewed as ‘normal’. Even more difficult to believe is that the nurses were unable to create a partnership with the mother. In the story, it seems as if the mom was dismissed as a partner in the process and felt as if no one was listening to her. Although a family member may not have the medical knowledge a nurse has, they have knowledge of their child and that is lost without their help. What would have happened if the nurse spent a moment to understand where Josie’s mother was coming from or called the doctor to communicate her symptoms? Did she truly believe her symptoms were normal or was she too busy with something else? It shouldn’t be possible to have a child be NPO without IV fluids running. While it takes children a long time to stop compensating, I’m sure there were signs of dehydration. During a bath, the mom notes how furiously Josie was sucking on a wet washcloth. If it was known that she was not drinking, how could these signs have been missed? It seems as though a total breakdown in obvious behavior and team communication is evident. The care delivery model failed to keep Josie safe. The nurse or team assigned seemed to lack knowledge of symptoms and the skill sets present did not work to make up for another team members deficits.

In relation to the purpose of this study, the driving force behind the research are three questions. What are nurses experience following patient’s death? What are their actions and coping strategies following patient death? Would better learning opportunities and supportive practice environments be provided once there is an understanding of nurses’ grief and coping process, if yes, was it beneficial. The researchers proceeded with a broad question which allowed the focus to be sharpened and delineated later in the

Statistically, about 40% to 84% of patients who received CPR in ICU end up dying within 24 hours; thus, ICU nurses deal with patient’s death more often than Med-Surg nurses (McMeekin, Hickman, Douglas, & Kelley, 2017). For this reason, many ICU nurses are getting psychological trauma, which causes a high level of anxiety (McMeekin et al., 2017). Also, ICU nurses often face with the burden of responsibility regarding making difficult decisions, frustration, emotional distress, and disappointment while they are taking care of dying patients and their families (Nazari et al.,

With the high demand of medical professionals and increasing numbers of people with chronic diseased, there might be a time where one nurse have to over see more patients than normal. Taking care of extra patients than normal might bring some work burnout and prevent nursing professionals from performing their job effectively. A study was done to measure the stress level of nurses working on the oncology department and the effect of stress leading the nurses to consider looking for job in other departments. It was found that 35% of the nurses were experiencing emotional stress and 17 % were depersonalized which then resulted in considering for other opportunities in less stressful departments (Davis S, Lind BK, Sorensen C, 2013). Stress can be experience from many factors such as death of a patient, patient’s family history, severity of patient’s health condition, and emotional attachment with patients. As a nursing professional, one have to witness devastating situations such as death of loved ones. It has been found that death and close relationship with patients and working environment are the main factors causing stress among nurses (Pavlos S et. al, 2016). Despite the fact that nursing professionals have to go through many stressful situations at work and may be in their personal life, how much attentive can they be while performing their nursing duties?

Upon choosing nursing as a career, it was known that in this position there would be much more death and loss than any other field previously considered. With that realization it is important to understand how to deal with death, and my own role in the process. By looking at a collective of research articles, it is important to point out that as a nurse death is not dealt with alone. It is with this idea that employers should focus in order to help relieve grief or compassion fatigue in their employees. This paper explores the circumstances of death that nurses deal with and the coping mechanisms that are most common, with the conclusion of what healthcare employers can do to help alleviate the grief that accompanies.

It is estimated that at least 33% of nurses have suffered from burn out at some time. Those particularly at risk for this form of secondary traumatic stress, are nurses who work in environments where patients’ health conditions do not typically improve. These can include fields such as death and dying and oncology. Despite this it is important to realize that no nurse is immune to compassion fatigue. This paper will seek to discuss why compassion is necessary in nursing care, as well as the manifestations, causes, development, effects, and solutions to compassion fatigue. As mentioned previously, compassionate care is a significant part of nursing practice. To understand how compassionate care can affect patients this paper will discuss two clinical examples. In The article Why Compassion Counts Peter Frost documents how he observed compassion during hospitalization. Mr. Frost was in a unit recovering from surgery related to cancer. In the room with him “ was a man in his early 70s who had his esophagus and stomach removed”. This gentleman was incontinent and one day on his way to use the restroom he had a bowel movement in the middle of the

I have chosen the topic of coping with death to construct a paper which can value my nursing career as well as make sense of one of the biggest impacts on nurses. It is important to learn how to cope with this situation so you can offer the best care to your patients/family of the patients.In a developed world, most people will die in hospitals from illness (Berk, L. E. 2018).