I can’t imagine how hard being a nurse would be. If you’re reading this and you’re a nurse, please know you have my utmost respect. To be there for so many major life moments — the good and the bad— would be so rewarding and devastating all at once.
So, I can imagine some things are best kept to yourself in an effort to protect your patients.
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Nurses are nothing short of heroes. Day in and day out, they show up for us and give us the best care they can.
However, if you’ve ever wondered what secrets nurses are keeping, there’s a Quora board for that. The question-and-answer platform was prompted with the question “What are the darkest secrets of nurses in the hospital that patients don’t know?”
“We already know that your child is dying of inoperable brain cancer, but we aren’t allowed to say a word,” Sarah, a pediatric critical care nurse replied.
“We have to watch you cling to hope that the scan will be negative and spend those terrible hours knowing the truth.”
“We often spend hours intercepting mistakes of things that could have reached you, but didn’t,” Sarah added. “While you sleep happily oblivious to this, nurses are constantly checking and checking, protecting from even the smallest to largest mistake. When you wake up, we say ‘good morning’ and leave it at that.”
“We already know the fate of the others that were in the car accident with you,” she continued.
“But it’s not for us to tell you, so we must keep the secret until the proper notification is given.”
Sarah also revealed one of the heartbreaking realities of being a pediatric critical care nurse.
“We watch your precious baby that has passed away, roll into a freezer into the wall, and shut the door,” she shared.
“I will take that to my grave, no matter what the parent asked me to describe to them.”
Beth, an ICU nurse, also chimed in.
“If you’re able to talk and do things for yourself, you are our lowest priority,” she revealed.
“It isn’t that we don’t care about you, we do, but our other patient is likely to be barely clinging to life. We get one stable patient and one critical patient. It’s a good thing when you’re the stable one.”
She continued:
“We only have 12 hours to do as much as we possibly can for you. As much as I would love to talk and get to know you, I can’t do that every shift. I will try, but there are days that I just don’t have the time.”
Beth also shared that there’s a good chance the hospital you’re visiting is short-staffed.
“We are probably overworked and understaffed. In my 12 years in ICU, it is rare that we have adequate staffing.”
I can only imagine how stressful that would be.
“We make inappropriate jokes. We deal with life and death every single day. We see some of the darkest sides of humanity,” Beth admitted.
“If we didn’t have a sense of humor about it, we wouldn’t be able to do it. I’m sorry if you hear my inappropriate jokes. I promise I don’t mean to offend you, I’m only trying to find a bright spot in my day.”
I think we can all understand that!
“We really do love our jobs,” Beth shared in her final point.
“We don’t do it for the money or the schedule or any of those other myths. We do it for you. Seeing you get better is worth it. I’ve had paralyzed patients walk again. I’ve had a guy that was literally hit by a train, get out of ICU and go to rehab.”
“I took care of a woman that had been hit by a car and was so injured, I couldn’t tell what her face looked like or what color her eyes should’ve been,” she continued.
“Six weeks later she was up walking and talking to me. These are the reasons we do this job.”
I think I speak for everyone when I say we are so thankful for the nurses out there and all they do for us.
