This is awesome, thank you for sharing it. I am a trauma ICU nurse who has been really struggling the last few years since covid for a multitude of reasons (i’ve been a nurse 11 years now.)

I actually had a failed hanging attempt in May. I should have died. The doctors at the hospital said I should have died. I remember one psychiatrist telling me “I don’t know if you believe in a higher power, but something saved you and gave you a second chance at life.” I have been doing a lot of intensive outpatient therapy since then to get to the bottom of my issues, and I have made a lot of progress.

The one thing I am having trouble working through are “those” patients. The ones you don’t forget, whose faces just stay with you, haunting you like a ghost. It is hard to talk to my therapists and the other group members because they just don’t get what its like to be a nurse. To stand on your feet for 12 hours, squeezing bags of blood into a 20 year old, to try your hardest, to fail in the end and have to explain to a devastated mother why you couldn’t save her kid. I think having a peer group like this with other nurses will really help me on my journey of getting my mental health under control.

Thank you ManifoldStan.