How to Cope with the Death of a Patient

Your first patient death is traumatic. It’s the first time you’re witnessing the transition of life to death and it’s something that not many professions should have to deal with. Unfortunately, it is an inevitable part of nursing. Which is why learning how to cope with the death of patients is so important.

Honor Your Patient

Honoring your patient is going to look different for everyone. Did you have a bond with this patient or was it your first-time taking care of them? Have you already met the family and established rapport with them?

Whatever the situation may be, spend time with the patient and the family. If you have built a bond with this patient, then share that with the family. Let them know the stories they shared with you and how you looked forward to hearing more. If not, stand in silence with the family. Listen to their requests and do the best you can to honor them. Answer questions the family may have and allow yourself to grieve with them when appropriate.

Also visit Nursing Fundamentals: A Guide To End-of-Life Care for more information.

Take a Moment

Honor yourself and take a mental health moment. Remove yourself from the room, check in on your feelings, and reflect on the situation. Remember your nursing role in this scenario and try to rid yourself of any guilt you may have associated with this patient death.

Remember, all feelings are valid here. You might be experiencing joy that your sick patient has moved on or sorrow that you weren’t able to get a heartbeat back. Either way, your feelings are your feelings, and they need to be acknowledged in the process of grief and recovery.

Ask for Help from Floor Staff

Nursing is a weird world where nurses experience death in one room and pain in the next, and it’s just not okay to show grief in a room that is not grieving. To help avoid this while still allowing yourself space to grieve, ask your floor nurses for help. Lean on them for support and support them when they’re having a similar experience.

If you have a PRN pain medication to give to another patient, it’s okay to ask your breaker or a coworker to help you give that while you take a moment. Especially if this is one of your first patient deaths, they should be more than willing to help you out.  

Debrief

Especially in code situations, you and anyone involved with the code will likely be debriefing together afterwards. In a patient death debrief, it usually goes over what happened to the patient, what the response was, what the outcome was, and what can be done to improve the outcome in the future. Hospitals do this to help address the situation and provide better patient outcomes in the future, but they also do this to help their nurses grieve. Talking through it with your coworkers who experienced the situation with you is therapeutic.

After your shift, try to leave your loss at work. This isn’t always going to be possible, especially when dealing with your first patient death, but try your best. Learn from this loss and take those coping tools with you. If you are still struggling with your patient death, reach out to a coworker who has experienced this before and ask them how they coped with the loss of a patient. Any coping tools to add to your tool belt are helpful.

For more information on codes, visit The Role of Code Teams in the Hospital Setting.

Give it Time to Heal

Sometimes all you need is a little time. Focus on self-care and do things that you find joy in. Doing so will be healing for you, mind and soul. Remember that death is a part of life, and it is more apparent in the hospital setting than anywhere else. Continue nursing your other patients and let them remind you of why you chose nursing in the first place.

Seek Help from a Professional

Sometimes, even with doing the previously mentioned steps, it is still difficult to move through the grieving process, and that’s okay. Seeking professional help is your best bet. If you’re seeing a lot of loss, it’s okay to reach out for help. Even if you feel like you’re coping the best you know how. Go through your workplace resources, usually they have a grief counselor. If not, seek help through your primary care physician.

For whatever reason, nurses and health care professionals have a misconception that seeking professional help after patient death is shameful. It is not. The amount of death and dying we see is more than what the average person should ever have to go through and even if you haven’t built a ‘strong bond’ with your patients, it still affects us.

We’re only human.

Visit Being Mortal by Atul Gawande for a great book on aging, death, and the medical professionals who are there to witness the last moments. 

How do you cope with patient death? Comment below.

Also visit Adjusting to Night Shift, How to Get the Most out of Your Preceptorship, and What to Expect Out of Nursing: Expectations versus Reality for more.