Beginings and endings

Sometimes it is hard to tell when something starts or stops. Sometimes it is painfully clear.

During shift change, you hand off patients by rounding on each on, updating their status to the new shift of nurses, docs, etc. The old shift is dead tired, ready to leave; the new shift still sleepy- waking up. At the end of one nursing home shift, the head nurse discovered one of her patients did not have a pulse, nor any breaths.

I arrived on scene with the firefighters and medics. The Nigerian nurses at the under-performing nursing home did not know how to perform CPR. The beginning of the end for the patient that was coding. After awhile, we called it there. Time of death- exactly midnight. Beginning of a new day, the end of another.