Nursing Blog with Expert Insights

Nursing isn't just about saving or improving lives. Sometimes it's also about helping patients die with dignity. So many times, I've seen patients decline to the point they are mentally gone and physically suffering, but their legal decision-makers can't accept death as an outcome. They refuse hospice and push for painful, risky interventions and surgeries. Don't get me wrong. I understand the pain of losing a loved one. I know it's hard to let someone you love go, and it of

Heart failure is a bitch to live with. You have to always be on top of your fluid intake, restrict how much you drink, carefully obey special diets, RELIGIOUSLY take your meds, monitor your vitals and electrolytes, keep your appointments, track your weight and output, and sometimes genetics STILL wins and you end up in the hospital anyways. Some people are really good at living with it. Others really just don't give a crap about keeping up with their treatment and end up repe

This is a sad one. It happened quite a while ago, maybe a couple years. I had a patient who had some kind of skin and tissue disease where large ulcers appeared all over and just grew in size and couldn't be stopped. Sort of like necrotizing fasciitis, but widespread in random spots. I don't remember what it was called. He was a bilateral amputee with an extremely poor prognosis. He'd been in the hospital for a long, long time trying different therapies and surgeries until al