A patient has died. His nurse begins postmortem care. “I tell myself the things I always do—it was his time, we did everything we could. I can hear someone crying outside the room.” In this month’s Reflections essay, author Kassandra August-Marcucio shares her feelings as she performs the steps of this protocol after a failed resuscitation attempt. We are reminded of each task, of the feelings of guilt that can arise (“I was his nurse and he died!”), of the last contacts with the patient’s family. “The exaggerated zip of the bag is final.” Almost every nurse has cared for a patient after the patient dies. Sometimes the nurse and patient have barely met; sometimes the patient is well-known to the staff. Many nurses (most, I hope), whatever their religious or spiritual beliefs, approach postmortem care with some sense of the gravity of the moment of someone’s passing. The “routine” tasks involved take on a slightly different aura than the other tasks of our days. Still, it’s hard not to rush through postmortem care to attend to the pressing needs of other patients. Nine years ago, trauma nurse Jonathan Bartels created the Medical Pause, a “practice [that] offers closure to both the medical team and the patient.” The Pause is a moment of silence of a minute or less, ideally performed immediately after death has been pronounced or resuscitation attempts have ended. It is not “religious” or proselytizing; the silence allows people of diverse practices and beliefs to share in respectful recognition of a […]

Source: The Thin Flat Line Between Life and Death – Off the Charts