The first time I saw a patient have an arrest was when I was 17 years old. It was 1975 and I was a 1st year nurse with all of 6 months experience in the care of sick people.
I was working on night duty in a nephrology/oncology ward. The ward was divided into 3 sections and I was in-charge of one of them under the supervision of an RN. My section was the least acute, but still it seems ridiculous to think back and remember that hospital management thought it perfectly okay to leave a 17 year-old in charge of 12 fairly sick patients. But so it was and we didn’t think anything of it at the time.
This particular night was my 5th on night duty and I knew all my patients pretty well. There was one gentleman in particular that I had connected with – as we nurses often do. This man was in renal failure and quite unwell. He would spend most of his nights awake, so I would often sit with him and we would quietly chat and share jokes while the other patients slept fitfully. I liked him and he liked me.
Well it was about 6am on this chilly winter morning and I was looking forward to the dawn and the end of my shift. I was doing my usual 6am rounds, checking the all-important fluid balances and doing observations. The patients were rousing sleepily about me.
As I headed towards my favourite patient I could immediately see that something wasn’t right. He was lying on his back and I could hear gurgling noises coming from him! I moved quickly and the first thing I did was roll him onto his side and grab the suction equipment as I thought he was choking. But as I started to suction I realised that he was arresting. With a hot and frightened rush of adrenaline and with shaking hands I grabbed his buzzer and buzzed 3 times. The ward emergency signal.
My favourite patient was a big man and I was a rather petit teenager, but at that moment I seemed to have added strength and with some effort I rolled him onto his back. With a racing heart and sweaty palms I realised that the CPR was up to me and so I started it, all the while silently hoping the RN would answer the emergency buzzer as quickly as possible.
Time seemed to stand still and I seemed to move in slow motion while I initiated CPR. I remember feeling hot and cold flushes as I desperately tried to remember all I had been taught. I hadn’t even seen an arrest before let alone be the nurse to find someone having an arrest and be the one to begin CPR! Fortunately I remembered what I was supposed to do, and even though time seemed to drag, the RN and the other nurse were with me within a very short time. The code was called, the RN took over, the resus team arrived and I faded into the background to finish my shift, shattered and shaking. I went home feeling as if I been in a car crash!
When I returned to work that night I found out that my favourite patient didn’t survive his arrest and I felt as if I had let him down and hadn’t done a good enough job in trying to resusitate him. Fortunately, even though debriefing wasn’t something that was commonly done, the RN was able to reassure me that he had been a very sick man and that I had done exactly as I should have. And that was the end of it.
I saw and participated in quite a few more arrests after that one and I have to admit that I never got used to them and found them all a nerve-wracking experience. However, all those subsequent arrests have faded from my memory, but the arrest of my favourite patient is as clear today as it was 35 years ago.
My memories aren’t just because of my fear and anxiety over participating in my first medical emergency though that of course is a big part of it.
It was also because a patient I had connected to died and I couldn’t help him. This particular experience really brought home to me what nursing is all about. It’s the sort of experience that made some of the 17 year-olds I worked with hand in their resignations!
For me it gave me a deeper understanding of what nursing is all about.
Nursing is about connecting with people, caring for them, helping them and saying good bye. And the goodbyes can be either happy and sad.
So that was my first arrest! how about yours?
photo courtesy of www.hospital.com
What’s new at Nurse Uncut?
Nurse Uncut looking for 3rd group of Nurse champions – do you want to be a part of the team?
Share your best nursing tip and win $150 book voucher!
thank you for sharing this, its is so reassuring to know those feelings of panic/self doubt/feeling like you don’t know what you are doing are common in those sorts of situations!!!!
I occasionally remember my previous patients. I have seen many many cardiac arrests. I would say that out of every ten there maybe if you are lucky one survives. If the rate is any higher they often have another in the near future. Persons that have cardiac arrests have a problem so really you are working with a problematic heart to start off with. The only time it isn’t like that is in the case of trauma. I have and still don’t have the luxury of an arrest team working in a small rural hospital. Too many nurses these days are subjected to the guilt trip by admin personnel that are way out of touch.