Student Nurse Patient Death: Driscoll

What?

During a late shift on a respiratory ward, a patient I had helped care for over three weeks died. His death was expected - he was receiving end of life care - and his daughter was with him. My practice supervisor asked if I wanted to be involved in caring for him after death, and I said yes. Together we performed last offices, and she talked me through each step, including the practical elements no lecture had covered, like continuing to speak to him by name. Afterwards, the daughter thanked us and I did not know what to say, so I said nothing and left the room. I cried briefly in the sluice, then finished my shift.

So what?

At the time I was most afraid of doing something wrong in front of the daughter - my focus was on my own performance rather than on her or on him. Looking back, the moment that matters most is the one I fumbled: when she thanked us, I treated it as something to escape rather than a chance to acknowledge her father. My supervisor later said simply, 'You don't need good words, you just need to not disappear', and that reframed the whole event for me. What surprised me was that the physical care after death felt not frightening but genuinely meaningful - it was the emotional encounter, not the body, that I was unprepared for. I also learned something about myself: I hide competence gaps behind busyness, and on a ward there is always somewhere else to plausibly be. My brief tears in the sluice felt shameful at the time; my supervisor treated them as ordinary, which taught me more about professional culture than any policy could.

Now what?

Next time a relative speaks to me after a death, I will stay, make eye contact, and say something simple and true - I have literally rehearsed 'He was lovely to care for. I'm so sorry' because I now know that in the moment I will not improvise well. I have written this experience up for my practice assessment document and discussed it with my academic assessor, and I asked my supervisor to involve me in any future end of life care on this placement rather than shielding me from it. I have also started using the university's peer reflection group, because I realised I had been carrying the event alone for a week before writing this.