Today's ICU Experience

This morning I went to my last day of clinicals today. I got to the hospital at about 7:15am and loitered for a while. I got report from my nurse and his trainee (an RN but new to the hospital). We went in a little before 8am to assess the patient. He was intubated but responded to the nurse talking to him. Just then, he another nurse came and said he was in Ventricular Fibrillation (V Fib), which is a heart rhythm that is not life sustainable for long. He had a pacemaker, and before she could finish telling us that, he got a shock from his pacemaker and was fine. He then went into V Fib again, and we started chest compressions and got the crash cart, only for his pacemaker to shock him again. He came back the second time but was not able to respond to the nurse. By this point, the code had been called and about a million doctors and doctors in training arrived. The third time he went into Asystole, which is no electrical activity in the heart and is not shockable, so his pacemaker didn't shock him. The doctors in training all took turns doing chest compressions while the nurses pushed meds like crazy. He got mag, epinephrine, and a couple of other drugs. This went on for 30 minutes and the doctor finally stopped the code and called the time of death. Before all this crazyness happened, one of the million doctors called the daughter and told her she should come to the hospital. By the time she got there he was dead, but she didn't know he was dead. It was bad. She got really upset (and rightfully so). I felt so bad for her. It was an interesting experience and not quite as horriffically scary as I expected. Not the best way to start a morning, but whatever.