Nurse-Patient Relationship

As a nurse, I am constantly reminded to maintain a professional relationship towards my patients and especially in my field of work, not to develop any form of close bond towards my patients. However, once in a while, there comes one patient whom you can't help but feel the closeness to her. Thus, I always end up developing this a close bond cum friendship with her and her family members. She becomes like my friend whom I would share our 'secrets' and comfort one another. I am her nurse, thus, I comfort her by alleviating her symptoms of cancer progression and when the end of life is near, I become her palliative nurse, adjusting her medications, titrating it according to her needs. I become her advocate to her family members and to doctors.

As she fades off to end her journey of life, as painful as it gets, I have to end our friendship with an appropriate closure. Tears will drop while she is no longer able to respond to me, I would shed a tear or two as I share the last few moments with her alone. It is a blessing from God that I still get to hold her hand as her breath shallows.

Although half of me would pray that she wouldn't die in front of me, for fear that I would lose my professional coolness but half of me would hope that she will die during my shift as a form of a closure and so that I could end my friendship with her with what we call 'The Last Office'.

Maybe that is what I am meant to do... A Nurse. Not just an ordinary nurse, but a nurse who has feelings for her patients. A nurse who risk her professional boundaries to develop friendship and feelings for her patients and their families.

God bless their last journeys back to Heaven, where their souls may rest in eternal peace.