What are your thoughts As an Orthopedic nurse I do not experience a lot of patients that pass on. Most of the patients that are on my unit come in healthy, they are in the hospital to have elective su

What are your thoughts

As an Orthopedic nurse I do not experience a lot of patients that pass on. Most of the patients that are on my unit come in healthy, they are in the hospital to have elective surgery. I have had patients that come in with fractures that are older with co-morbidities and they pass away while in the hospital. And on a rare occasion we have had a patient through a PE and pass unexpectedly. Recently with the COVID outbreak the orthopedic unit has been closed since all elective surgery has been stopped. During this time I have been on several different units taking care of COVID patients and patients that are sick with illness. Just this past Saturday we had an 90 year old woman code on us and we tried for 45 minutes to bring her back, but it was her time to leave this earth. Each life is precious no matter the patients age. It is a little easier to except when the patient is older and you know they lived a full life. When I first started to work at the hospital and lost my first patient ironically it was a priest. I have the honor of working in a Catholic hospital, which is a special place to be especially when we have a loss of life. We have so much spiritual support to help us as heath care workers make sense of it all. I will not say that having a patient pass on me gets any easier but there has been times when I feel that I have helped my patients and their families get to the next place.