Personal Blog: Small gesture, speak volumes
In a earlier blog I described that I find working within the (emotional) extremes of acute and intensive care, one of the most beautiful aspects.
In this blog I will describe an experience, which in my opinion expleains how and what you could possibly mean for others, where
This case has been a few years ago, but i still can recall is as like it was the day of yesterday.
I was in my last year of nursing school; and I worked as a driver of the MICU (mobile intensive care unit, actually a mobile intensive care room).
I had just started the my shift, I had received the information from the driver for me and I had just finished checking the MICU ambulance.
Until suddenly the phone rang.
I got the message that we had to go get a seriously ill patient from the emergency room of a smaller (peripheral) hospital in the outskirts of our deployment area.
Here was a critically ill patient who had to go to the highest level of intensive care as quickly as possible.
Immediately I rushed to the hospital (to which we were linked) and where picked up the intensivist (intensive care physician) and the intensive care nurse on duty (these are responsible for the patient during transport).
As soon as we could, we drove to the hospital, where we found the patient in a worrying state.
Mw was almost completely bare naked, in a jumble of infusion lines and wires from various monitoring equipment. "Luckily", Mrs. (An elderly lady of around 65 years) seemed to have little knowlegde of it, mrs. had considerably less mental state and barely consciousness (which had to do with her illness).
It may sound strange, but as a professional, I look differently at patients, than for example at family. When I look at patients, I look from a professional point of view, not only, but rather, I am more focused on the clinical symptoms you need to keep an eye on.
It is also an (unconscious) defense mechanism because otherwise, with too much involvement, you would not last and you are not able to work in the acute care.
Because what really mattered to me is the husband
of the woman, who was completely shocked and stood almost dazed in the room,
where various medical personnel are trying to insert an arterial line (infusion access to the artery) in the groin of Mw. This access is necessary to provide the necessary medication and it is important to get this access to time monitoring, such as blood pressure
During these interventions, Mw was, as I said, almost completely exposed, including her private parts (since the doctors tried to get an access via the groin.
At that moment I could do little in terms of medical interventions, the only thing I did was to take a small towel which I put on the exposed private parts of the female patient, so she still could have some privacy.
In the end, we rushed Mw. To the university hospital, where the patient sadly died in the course of the evening.
Also in this patient there was a septic shock based on a bacterial infection, so this case is very similar to the case I had previously described: blog
Later I heard from a colleague of the ambulance service (who was friends with the couple) that the husband of Mw. Had appreciated this gesture, as a result of which this small gesture got a bigger meaning.
Given that Mw. Had become (seriously) ill within a few hours, and even died, it was all impossible for the husband to comprehend and there were actually no aspects to think of, in the whole, where he could look back with a 'good' feeling.
This made this small gesture, perhaps the only bright spot in all of the darkness
In this blog I will describe an experience, which in my opinion expleains how and what you could possibly mean for others, where
"the love can be in small gestures"
This case has been a few years ago, but i still can recall is as like it was the day of yesterday.
I was in my last year of nursing school; and I worked as a driver of the MICU (mobile intensive care unit, actually a mobile intensive care room).
I had just started the my shift, I had received the information from the driver for me and I had just finished checking the MICU ambulance.
 |
| Mobile intensive care unit (in the netherlands) |
I got the message that we had to go get a seriously ill patient from the emergency room of a smaller (peripheral) hospital in the outskirts of our deployment area.
Here was a critically ill patient who had to go to the highest level of intensive care as quickly as possible.
Immediately I rushed to the hospital (to which we were linked) and where picked up the intensivist (intensive care physician) and the intensive care nurse on duty (these are responsible for the patient during transport).
As soon as we could, we drove to the hospital, where we found the patient in a worrying state.
Mw was almost completely bare naked, in a jumble of infusion lines and wires from various monitoring equipment. "Luckily", Mrs. (An elderly lady of around 65 years) seemed to have little knowlegde of it, mrs. had considerably less mental state and barely consciousness (which had to do with her illness).
It may sound strange, but as a professional, I look differently at patients, than for example at family. When I look at patients, I look from a professional point of view, not only, but rather, I am more focused on the clinical symptoms you need to keep an eye on.
It is also an (unconscious) defense mechanism because otherwise, with too much involvement, you would not last and you are not able to work in the acute care.
Because what really mattered to me is the husband
of the woman, who was completely shocked and stood almost dazed in the room,
where various medical personnel are trying to insert an arterial line (infusion access to the artery) in the groin of Mw. This access is necessary to provide the necessary medication and it is important to get this access to time monitoring, such as blood pressure
During these interventions, Mw was, as I said, almost completely exposed, including her private parts (since the doctors tried to get an access via the groin.
At that moment I could do little in terms of medical interventions, the only thing I did was to take a small towel which I put on the exposed private parts of the female patient, so she still could have some privacy.
In the end, we rushed Mw. To the university hospital, where the patient sadly died in the course of the evening.
Also in this patient there was a septic shock based on a bacterial infection, so this case is very similar to the case I had previously described: blog
Later I heard from a colleague of the ambulance service (who was friends with the couple) that the husband of Mw. Had appreciated this gesture, as a result of which this small gesture got a bigger meaning.
Given that Mw. Had become (seriously) ill within a few hours, and even died, it was all impossible for the husband to comprehend and there were actually no aspects to think of, in the whole, where he could look back with a 'good' feeling.
This made this small gesture, perhaps the only bright spot in all of the darkness
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