“Eleven-year-old Olivia’s parents were ‘done,’ had reached their limit of bad news, and refused to enter the conference room. They didn’t want more information or what they perceived as pressure to withdraw life support.”
The hardest decision.
by Janet Hamlin for AJN
These words in the opening paragraph of this month’s Reflections column,”Little Sparrow,” describe a situation that will be instantly recognizable to many nurses, especially those who regularly work with people who have suffered severe head injuries or other central nervous system trauma. These two short sentences encapsulate the terrible crisis that develops when a tragic outcome seems inevitable to staff—while family members, in shock, struggle to absorb information and make decisions.
A healing garden.
In the essay, which will be free until February 20, Elaine Meyer, PhD, RN, describes her approach to one such family. While the parents of the seriously injured young girl pray for a miracle, staff are distressed because they feel they are inflicting unnecessary suffering on the child.
Meyer suggests that the girl’s parents join her for a walk in the medical center garden, where they can talk side by side as they stroll about, rather than facing each other across an impersonal conference table. Read this bittersweet Reflections essay and learn more about what transpires in the garden that day.
Later, contemplating her encounter with the parents and its outcome, Meyer muses:
“Regardless of diagnosis, age, circumstances, or ability to pay, nature willingly extends her gifts and does not forsake us.”
Such a great pity that this same Prouty Garden, donated in 1953 by a generous benefactor for the perpetual use of children, parents, and staff and so many years beloved at Children’s in Boston, has been razed to make way for a new building that might not even be needed by some estimates. The corporate-looking rooftop “green space” can never, ever replace this peaceful, intimate, magical oasis of big trees, path, nooks, small animal sculptures waiting to be found, mosses, benches, and cooling breezes. Children have died in peace here; small joys and big sorrows found their resting places almost daily, among them my own when my child was there years ago. This is not progress. This is not patient- and family-centered care. This is corporate medicine protesting too much.