Nurses witness horrific tragedy, unimaginable gut wrenching grief, heartbreaking sadness, trauma and death. And it’s not just rarely or occasionally… it’s every day. Day after day after day, we must face this tragedy, this unimaginable grief and then within minutes, and sometimes even seconds, we have to move past it… on to the next patient, and then the next patient. So how do we do it? How does a nurse do it?
Nurses develop an amazing ability to compartmentalize. We do it by taking the grief, the sadness and putting it into a compartment… sort of like a box. Then we close it and shove it down inside. It may sound weird or strange, but as a nurse you have to do this. You must learn how to do this… because if you don’t, the grief will destroy you.
