Last week I was able to witness the care that Bridget provided for one of our patients who is critically ill in the end stages of her life. This patient has been in the cardiac intensive care unit for over a year. Her clinical status has been slowly declining, and on the day that Bridget was assigned to care for her, she was in a lot of pain. Bridget was a strong advocate for her, explaining to the medical team how much pain she was in and suggesting different pharmacologic and non-pharmacologic interventions we could use to help. She was able to get new strategies into this patient's plan of care, including a new pain medication that worked much better for her. Not only was her advocacy so impressive and touching, but the way that Bridget interacted with this patient was incredible. She would lean down and get on the same level of the patient and attentively listen to what she was saying. She looked at her and spoke with so much empathy and compassion. She let this patient know that she was heard, she was deeply cared for, and that Bridget truly was going to do everything she could do to make an unfortunate situation the least painful and most comfortable it could be.
Bridget was very busy on that day and she never stopped making sure that everything this patient needed was taken care of from fresh heat packs to repositioning. Bridget was deeply saddened by the situation but never let her emotions show in the patient room or interfere with the care she so gracefully gave that day. She even spoke about organizing a "spa day" for the patient on Saturday as she knew she would be her nurse for three days in a row. I feel so privileged to work with Bridget and feel she is deserving of recognition of the extra mile she went for a patient in their last days.