The first time I lost a patient in medicine

I remember her face so clearly. The first death hurt. Every one after that hurt. Death never gets easy. I will never forget you.

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About Me:
Name: Jake Goodman
Degree: MD, MBA, PGY1 Psychiatry Resident

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49 Comments

  1. Trigger warning *Covid story*

    I'm an ICU nurse. Most of my covid patients in the ICU during the surges had been intubated prior to me working with them, so I mostly formed bonds with their loved ones. But there's a few that I remember working with beforehand when they were alert. One in specific was a gentleman in his 50/60s (I intentionally don't remember the names of any of my patients as a mental self-preservation technique) that I worked with the day he was transferred to the ICU and was intubated. He was scared, wanted to talk to his family/fiancée. I helped him with that, and helped him understand the process he was about to undertake. Right before he was intubated he asked me if he was going to die and I told him that I honestly didn't know, that the survival rate was low at the time (prevaccine), but I would try my best to do what I could to keep him alive. I worked almost nonstop for the next 6hrs trying to start all of the medication drips/ and IV pushes to help him stay alive. The night shift nurse did the same for the next 12hs. I finally got him stabilized 6hrs into my shift the next day. After that shift, I was off for 2-3 days.
    I think it was a Friday too. When I came back that Monday or Tuesday, I knew I'd find his room empty but there was still a glimmer of hope when I checked the unit manager (list of patients in the unit). There was always a bit of hope, but pre-vaccine covid was an uphill battle in the ICU. Yet knowing we were fighting a losing battle didn't mean we weren't going to give it our all.

  2. Happened the other day. When I left my patient he was cracking jokes and walking around. Come back 4 days later he is a vegetable and I watch him pass that night

  3. I was interning when I lost my first patient. Victim of an accident causing SCI with an already existing (undiagnosed) cervical instability issue. She was a 3 year old- such tiny hands I still feel I can hold. Miss her a lot and wish her life was different.

  4. My first passed on a Sunday and I arrived on Monday morning. I knew she would be gone. She barricaded herself in the house, so the cops had to get permission to enter. She was found on the floor just outside her bathroom in her bedroom 2ith her depends down suggesting she was on her way to the bathroom and didn't make it. The coroner told me this happens a lot with senior dying from constipation.

  5. As an intern, I was with a patient all night when she went critical, we were short staffed and we did everything we could but come morning she left us… I'll never forget her.

  6. This is part of the reason why I want to volunteer in the Starlight Room at my hospital. It’s a room for kids who are inpatients or outpatients to come to do they can play games and do arts and crafts. It made my stay after open heart surgery so much better, and the people there are so funny and amazing

  7. So far I have only had one patient whose death was hard to swallow. Came onto our ICU as an NSTEMI (heart attack) in preparation for intervention. I went in, got all the consent forms done for the coronary intervention and since she was in her early seventies I had a relatively quick chat about how far we should go if it came to the worst. We agreed that she wanted the intervention and wanted all sensible treatment, but she did not want resuscitation in case of cardiac arrest. About an hour later someone says that we should pick her up from the cathlab so that her son could say his farewells. It turned out that she had vastly progressed coronary heart disease and just as they were finishing the intervention, she went into VFib. When I had seen her, she had been totally stable and so her death came as an ugly surprise. At least, she was physically and mentally fit until the very end, an end that came quickly and with little discomfort.

  8. Months before I attempted to return to school (with intentions of becoming a music therapist), I volunteered at a memory care residential center. It was a grand surprise to discover one of my friends – a former psycholinguistics professor who’d written a book on the subject – was there as a patient! He eventually died, as did many of the patients. It was saddening, but not unexpected. It was a bit disorienting to show up and discover another person had died. (Most were elderly and frankly didn’t know who I was b/c they had Alzheimer’s or dementia.) What threw me more than anything was that friends I’d made – the family and friends who visited the patients – disappeared after their loved ones died.

  9. Worse feeling ever. I never could get used to it working in the nursing home, so I resigned only to find out my current job is worse. Here today, gone tomorrow😭😩😪

  10. Losing patients is such a traumatic event, especially for new providers. As a profession, we need to do a much better job to support our young ones in the field, both in medicine and nursing.

  11. My first pt death I turned my back for 10 minutes and when I left the bathroom he was coding ☹️ I still can’t shake the feeling I could’ve been a better nurse to him

  12. Im a Home Health Aide and went to a patients house walked in and found her deceased, I'll never forget her and it was almost 10 years ago

  13. As someone who's already in college and becoming a nurse in the future, this scares me. Im scared of knowing that the person who I had just a laugh with will be the last one I will have with them.

  14. Even though i will never cry when somebody d*es because i have come to terms that It's okay nobody lives forever but still leaves a wound in my deep wound in my heart. Its aright to cry It's okay to mourn It's okay to be sad try to be happy everyday even though it’s going to be hard sometimes 🤍

  15. It was 2016. I visit my hubby in ICU. The nurses recognize me from the month before. My uncle passed in November just two doors down from where my hubby was. I lost Allen five days later. Both times the nurses were the greatest. Peace. 😔❤