You’ve learned about it, you’ve been warned about it, and today you’re expecting it. Sort of.
You haven’t really been a nurse for all that long, and today’s the day everyone is telling you, “your patient is probably going to code today.”
You’re scared. You’re prepared, but you’re not prepared.
You’re familiar with the crash cart, you’ve watched codes before, you’ve been a code recorder, handing over medications, and carefully documenting every detail of the cardiac arrest. You’ve helped a little, but mostly got in the way when you’ve been in the room.
But it’s never been your patient.
It’s never been one you’re responsible for.
You’re at the nursing station when you catch the extreme bradycardia on the central monitor, and before you can scurry into the room, there’s already someone shouting down the hallway to call a code, a crash cart rolled into the front, and with your heart pounding, you reach your room.
It’s your patient, but not the one everyone predicted….it’s the sweet little lady next door, the one who was admitted for a simple sacral wound debridement surgery,
…the one you never saw coming.
Your world slows to a standstill as you take in the scene; your colleagues working, lightening quick, throwing pacer pads on, compressing her chest, bolusing fluids, whooshing breath into her endotracheal tube. Shaking on the inside you spring into action, despite your confused mind, which is saying, “what did I do? What went wrong, why is she coding?”
You push your way into the crowded room, you aren’t going to be a spectator, this is your patient, your responsibility.
You work hard, your hands work faster than you thought they were capable of, yet it’s not enough. You dance around the crowd of coworkers, duck under tangles of tubing, invasive lines, and your mind is still ticking over, trying to figure out the origin; was it crappy labs? Was it an undetected respiratory, cardiac or neurological event? Were there signs you didn’t see?
You feel the tears fall, as her time of death is called, and you try to hide it, you don’t want to appear weak, but they fall anyway. She was your responsibility, a simple wound debridement, and you failed her.
You will learn to not only prepare for the expected arrests, but to expect the unexpected.
You will learn, responsibility comes with an intense price, despite people telling you, “it isn’t your fault.”
You will learn, even on your best day, it isn’t always enough
You will learn, that you won’t always get answers as to why a patient coded, or died.
And you will learn, to go on,
You will go on to the next room, the next patient.
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