So I was talking to someone who also works in aged care and one of their residents has just passed on. They were dying already but this person was the one that convinced the family to give pain meds because of how much distress the resident was in. This resident went pretty quickly after this.

And you know what the nurse is left with? Feeling like it’s their fault, they feel guilty for giving the medication.

That guilt never really goes away. You always have that resident in the back of your head thinking of you hadn’t of pushed for that medication would they be alive still? Would they have come around and gotten better? These are the questions we are left with.

We bond so much with our residents that when one does die we feel guilty. This is a sign of how much we care and how invested we are with each resident.

Rustic scene of horse pulling wooden cart