Another Time And Beyond

 My Reflective Practice

Death! This is the concept that I need to come to grips within my kind of work. In fact I am sad when the leap of faith to save our residents’ life eventually changed into an eventful acceptance. When a resident’s time is running out all it takes at this stage is to give him the quality of comfort and dignity that he deserves. The goal is to give his life a beautiful ending in the eyes of his creator, friends and relatives.

Pondering upon the things that constitute our nursing practice I have realised that we all staff in general are giving our best efforts for our residents to be happy and comfortable in their remaining days.

Every nurse at T.O.P. will assess the resident against the ‘Gold Standards Framework’ ensuring that on a daily basis the palliative care that our particular resident needs are met. The difference or variance occurs from each individual resident’s choice and medical condition. The whole care is based on the resident’s individual care plans. A specific advance care plan is drawn that reflects  resident’s wishes on how he wants his care to continue and dealt with when his condition deteriorates and he will be no longer capable of making that future decision.  To deliver this care we reach out support from multidisciplinary team, e.g. Gp, palliative care team, etc. To a certain degree we honour relatives’ precious involvement as possible. Once the end of life care is established this will be handed down to all staff to ensure delivery and continuity. This is one of the examples of the clinical procedures that we do here at T.O.P. Our care home is operating vigorously according to the legal standards and policies as evidenced by its 3 star CQC award. The whole company’s philosophy and ethos of care, I can say are in place. But what I really want to highlight in this reflection is about the good attributes and values of staff delivering this exceptional care from behind those walls.   

On reflection the priceless thing that we do that makes us deliver excellent care to our residents are our amazing camaraderie, teamwork, and high regard for each other’s skills and heartfelt contributions no matter how small they are. In this home we all work as one and we all love and respect our residents. We connect and assume best interest from each other. By far one can expect an extra help when needed. It feels like we are family and our residents are our second parents.

Normally I have a difficult time accepting death with all the sadness it brings and represents plus the ghostly side of it but through the support of my colleagues and most importantly the wisdom of my residents I have gradually overcome my personal issues and fears. I must admit though that the ghostly side has not vanished at all.  

To witness death more often than normal is inevitable in this place but it is also here I have observed that death is imminent and more welcome. In truth it is our residents’ haven towards another time and beyond?

As one of the comments made by our resident during an intimate chat, “I am 99; I am ready to go and I thank you for my excellent care”. What a relief, being a nurse to hear these endearing words from a resident under my care has helped me in a way to move on and let go.

I wrote this article purposely for my reflective practice and because I have a blog I would like to share this with you all. I hope you’ll like it. Until next time...from me with love.