How Nurses in Elderly Care Can Manage the Emotional Impact of Patient Loss

All nurses lose patients. It’s part of the job. However, in most healthcare careers, dealing with death does not have the same certainty that it is for people working with elderly patients. Generally speaking, those receiving geriatric care are simply no longer in a stage of life where recovery is possible. They may not be dying, but their experiences with the healthcare system will end with their death.

This is natural. It is also emotionally difficult for the people responsible for administering their care. How do nurses responsible for taking care of elderly patients cope with frequent loss? While there is no one size fits all solution there are strategies you can use to make the emotional aspect of this work easier. Stress may be one of the most prominent issues facing nurses today, but there are plenty of ways to handle it productively.  Read for some tips!

Quick Note

The content of this article is designed to help you manage your feelings. It is not attended to help you bury them. Empathy is an important part of any healthcare career. In fact, compassion fatigue is often the first step towards burnout and eventual turnover.

You are seeing and experiencing sad things. Sad feelings are a natural consequence. The goal is not to avoid that fact but to deal with it in a way that allows you to do and even enjoy your work.

Pay Attention to Your Feelings

During this thrum of everyday life, it is sometimes difficult to fully understand what is bothering you. It’s not at all uncommon for a busy adult to go weeks, months, even years without realizing that they were upset in the first place. It is particularly important for healthcare workers to monitor their feelings.

You can do this by practicing mindfulness behaviors. Every night, try to spend a few moments, clearing your head and focusing on your breathing. You can also try muscle tension and relaxation techniques. This is the process of tightening segments of your body and then slowly allowing your muscles to relax. This will create a sense of relaxation and peacefulness. 

When you engage more actively in staying present you will inevitably begin to get a clear sense of what is bothering you. You will also have the tools to process your feelings. Mindfulness habits are not a substitution for mental health services, but they can be a useful and sustainable way to manage uncomfortable emotions.

Avoid Unsustainable Fixes

Psychologists recognize two basic categories of happiness. Hedonic— these are behaviors that provide short-term satisfaction but do not contribute to your overall well-being. Having a beer or two at the end of a  long day is an example of hedonic relief. The alcohol soothes your stress levels in the short term, but it does nothing to fix the underlying problems. If left unchecked, it could even exacerbate them in the form of alcohol dependency, or even milder repercussions like a hangover.

Then there is eudemonic is well-being. Behaviors that improve your emotional baseline. The meditation we mentioned in the last heading is a good example of eudemonic behavior. Other examples include reading, exercise, spending time outside, and so on.

There is certainly room for hedonic pleasure, but you should look toward eudemonic solutions for dealing with work-related stress. Not only will these habits help you deal with it better but they may improve your overall emotional experience in other aspects of your life as well.

Let Someone Know

Problems feel so much bigger when you’re dealing with them all by yourself. Tap into your support system. Tell your partner. If you don’t have a partner, tell your family. Your friends. Your employer.

Chances are your hospital has support materials on hand to help people deal with stress, anxiety, and depression. Your coworker could also be an excellent source of support. Chances are pretty good many of them have experienced the same feelings you are going through right now.

Don’t be afraid to see a professional. Mental health services are a useful and increasingly mainstream way to get robust support for the things that are bothering you. You do not have to have a chronic mental illness to benefit from psychiatric assistance.

Remember that the more proactive you are about handling these feelings, the more manageable they will ultimately be.

Sometimes You Won’t Be Able to Handle It

It’s true. At a certain point in your career, you may feel like all of the grief is catching up with you. Maybe you’ve seen too many people die. Maybe you’ve just lost a patient who meant a lot to you. Whatever the case, it is very normal for nurses in all stages of the profession to feel emotional burnout from time to time.

If this happens to you consider speaking with a supervisor. They may be able to direct you toward a less emotionally intensive placement for the time being.

Many people feel tempted to pivot into a different career path once they experience the emotional toll of nursing. That isn’t always necessary.

Look for ways to refresh. Accept your difficult feelings for what they are. Try to find the silver lining.

Your grief won’t last forever.

Conclusion

It is important to remember that the patients you meet are already sick. No matter what happens they are going to die.

The work you do as a geriatric care provider does not hasten their end. On the contrary, it brings comfort to the last few weeks of their lives.

While this truth won’t always be enough to keep you from crying into your pillow at the end of the day it is worth keeping in mind. The work that you do matters. It is difficult, but it is also extremely important.

Whether you are a gerontologist, a family nurse practitioner, or a more typical floor nurse, the work you do makes a big difference.

Your community deserves healthcare heroes who are up to the task of offering compassionate care and support to the most vulnerable segments of the population.