Diary of an ICU Nurse and Why Doctors Die Differently

There are a lot of truths in this article: Diary of an ICU nurse.

And this one: Why Doctors Die Differently

I suppose there are moments when each of us who work in the intensive care setting has to ask ourselves what we are really doing for, or more appropriately, to our patients.

Dying is hard. Watching a loved one die is harder, it hurts.

We are all going to die. How do you want to die?

It really isn’t a joke. We all say we are going to tattoo DNR (Do Not Resuscitate) to our chests. We all tell each other to not let “them” do this to us. Funny though, we are “them”. We tell each other not to do what we do to other people to ourselves. And the saddest part of all is that we mean it.

We don’t want 911 called. We don’t always choose chemo. We don’t want CPR or ACLS. We all would choose to die.

We all would choose to die.

Choose.

There is no failure in death. There is no failure in allowing the natural to occur. There is no failure in receiving one’s fate. Yet we fight it.

Life is a beautiful and most precious affair. The goal is to not demote or negate its beauty. But death is a part of life. And believe it or not, there can be great beauty, great comfort, great peace, and even great joy in a quality death.

Hospice and Palliative care are greatly needed and greatly underutilized options that can help achieve a quality death.

Please talk to your family. Please talk to your ICU team. Please ask the hard questions. There is no reason not to and so many reasons to do.