• Can Oper Room Nurs J · Jun 2005

    A night in the life of an OR nurse.

    • Cindy Laukkanen.
    • Surgical Services, Alberta Children's Hospital, Calgary, AB, Canada.
    • Can Oper Room Nurs J. 2005 Jun 1; 23 (2): 14-6.

    AbstractThe author shares a personal experience, during a night shift in the OR, that changed her forever. I was defined as a nurse by that moment of trauma. I spent 9 years as a trauma specialist in a large U.S. hospital. We did gun shots and stabbings every single night. After facing the results of too many school shootings, I came back to Canada. I was tired. After that night, death was never again an idea, a poetic notion of the spirit leaving the body. It was cold, it was pulseless, it was bloody, and it has a smell all it's own. To this day I can tell if a patient is going to die on the table, I can smell it. I had faced fear and death, and survived. I was certainly not "new" anymore... nor was I naïve.

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