9. You will have to learn how to deal with death.
These days, especially with medical technology, we’re saving more and more people due to the advances in healthcare. But you will also see the cardiac arrest who can’t be saved, or the person who has such bad trauma that they bleed out. Death is part of the territory but nothing can really prepare you to watch one of your patients die. The hardest cases are when the patient is young. When you see something really upsetting, that’s where you lean on your network of other nurses. It’s so helpful to talk about what happened with someone else who understands.
10. Just being there with a patient, or patient’s family, can be healing.
Most people, when they come to the emergency department, it’s not a planned visit. Patients and their families are dealing with a lot of anxiety and stress, and we have the opportunity to be there when people are most vulnerable. Just being there, holding their hand — that can go a long way.