“What would you do, doctor?” The family had been explicit in wanting straightforward communication about their child, whose neurological disease had progressed to the point where she was continually seizing, despite every medication the physicians had tried. The seizures were in turn damaging her brain, such that she was minimally responsive to stimuli and was … Continue reading The Ethical Use of our Therapeutic Connections with Patients’ Families
moral distress
When Empathy and Desire to Help Others are not Enough to Fuel Nursing
In a recent harrowing shift and the subsequent “I feel like I’ve been hit by a truck” day after, I found myself wondering what was really behind some feelings in me that we generally label “burnout.” Did I just not care enough about my patient and her family to consider all the hard work more … Continue reading When Empathy and Desire to Help Others are not Enough to Fuel Nursing
On Collective, Systemic Grief as an ICU Nurse
Those who have been following my public work over the years know that it started off with a desire to bring voice to - and integrate - the individual grief that we carry on behalf of our patients. When COVID hit, nurses began to grapple with entirely different levels of grief. Particularly for my incredible … Continue reading On Collective, Systemic Grief as an ICU Nurse
Self Care: The Value of Solitude and Introspection
In all my 14 years of PICU nursing, I've never quite experienced the overlapping volume and intensity of suffering, moral distress amongst nurses, death, and anger from patients' families that our unit experienced this past August - October. The bike accident that snuffed out a teenage life in a moment. The newly diagnosed cancer patient … Continue reading Self Care: The Value of Solitude and Introspection
Reckless Politics and the Potential for Profound Harm in Healthcare
I have little desire to turn this space into a forum for political arguments. That said, we are barely recovered as individual healthcare workers, a healthcare system, and a country, from the pandemic and some of the political mishandlings that happened during the pandemic. Healthcare has never been easy, but we all have felt the … Continue reading Reckless Politics and the Potential for Profound Harm in Healthcare
Technology and the Loss of Human Connection in Healthcare – Part One
As charge nurse on a busy day in our PICU, I was the hub of traffic control. Two of our patients were stable enough to transfer out of the ICU to the medical/surgical floors. One patient in the ED had caught a bad respiratory virus and was struggling to breathe. One of our physicians went … Continue reading Technology and the Loss of Human Connection in Healthcare – Part One
The Tensions We Constantly Navigate as Healthcare Workers
My therapist recently noted how much inner work and wrestling I must be constantly doing as a nurse, without being fully aware of what is rumbling underneath the surface. Today I find myself feeling really tender, and I’ve got a feeling it’s because of the recent accumulation of patient stories that have gone unpacked, evoking … Continue reading The Tensions We Constantly Navigate as Healthcare Workers
Latest Blog Post for American Journal of Nursing: Honoring the Personhood of Brain-Dead Patients
My latest blog post for American Journal of Nursing treads carefully into the art of caring for pediatric patients who have been pronounced brain-dead. These are some of the most sensitive spaces to inhabit as a nurse, some of the trickiest conversations to navigate with the parents and other loved ones struggling deeply with the … Continue reading Latest Blog Post for American Journal of Nursing: Honoring the Personhood of Brain-Dead Patients
An Unexpected Remedy for My Moral Distress
When Katherine first started bringing her very medically-complicated daughter into our pediatric ICU, we all marveled that her child had even survived the early months of infancy. All the odds were against them, but they were tough, this mom and daughter pair. I didn’t know what her pregnancy and birth journeys were like. Did she … Continue reading An Unexpected Remedy for My Moral Distress
Where is God in the PICU: Cases of Injustice
A couple of months ago, we had a cluster of patients come through our pediatric ICU with extraordinarily heavy stories of injustice. One child had been severely abused for months by a caretaker in the hiddenness of the caretaker’s home. Another child had been shot by a stranger and was left mentally intact but physically … Continue reading Where is God in the PICU: Cases of Injustice
The Heart of Nursing 