By Marcy Phipps, RN, a regular contributor to this blog. Her essay, “The Love Song of Frank,” was published in the May issue of AJN.

The weekend was busy in the ICU; several critically ill trauma patients were admitted in quick succession and the unit was filled with grieving families. The air was heavy with tragedy and misery, and it was draining to work under such weight.

I had a single day off, which didn’t feel like enough, and when I returned to work there were new patients in the beds and the mood in the unit had drastically changed. Disarming, but not surprising; the ICU is always the same and yet different.

One of the young patients from the weekend had become an organ donor, which had been anticipated and was considered a positive outcome, relatively. In discussing the weekend events and the ways in which things had resolved, one of my colleagues mentioned that, if given the opportunity, she’d embrace the chance to go to the operating room with the organ procurement team. Her beloved niece had been an organ donor and she sees organ donation as a validation and continuance of life, an ultimate example of “paying it forward.” She takes great comfort in knowing that her niece did not die in vain; lives were saved. She’d like to see, firsthand, the workings of the surgical team as they extract the organs.

“I would never do that,” […]