Nurses Coping with Personal Grief

How many of you have felt helpless or guilty when caring for a seriously ill or dying patient? How many become overwhelmed with emotion after a particularly “bad death”, or the death of a patient you have allowed yourself to become attached to? What should nurses do to avoid the pain that such circumstances often cause? Or are there appropriate ways to deal with these feelings?

Because nurses work so closely with dying patients….providing intimate care to the whole person…including physical, emotional, and spiritual care…..sharing in conversation the patient’s fears and concerns…… we expose ourselves…our personal feelings. When patients die, we seldom allow ourselves to adequately acknowledge our own losses, or to fully comprehend the intimacy of our relationships with clients. Too often we think we are to be "pillars of strength" in times of crisis or death. While we provide supportive care to patients and families, we fail to recognize our personal need to process loss. We fail to see our need to grieve.

In order to offer compassionate care for the critically sick and for the dying, as nurses we must be able give of ourselves without being destroyed in the process. For self preservation, we may resort to ineffective coping mechanisms such as withdrawal, psychological numbing, and avoidance of personal involvement with patients. Failure to work through the grieving process leads to potential burnout.

As nurses, we strive to provide compassionate care, sharing in the grief, loss, and fear experienced by dying patients and their families. We want to do more than just go through the motions, becoming numb to the pain of others. What are some of the ways you have found to cope with the repetitive emotional strain that you face on a daily basis as you care for people in physical, emotional, and spiritual pain?

It is important that we see ourselves as humans and recognize the emotional reactions that traumatic events evoke in us. Acknowledgment of our vulnerability to tragedy is a fundamental factor in the way each of us handles the senseless losses we are faced with every day in our professional lives.

Feel free to share your stories of situations that have been particularly difficult for you to deal with. We can learn from each other.