Incoming students, you need to hear this: its not all about you. Let me explain.

My first hospital rotation was on an oncology floor. I answered a patients call light by myself. She asked if we had any extra tissues, I said yes, and as I turned to leave she said, I just got a phone call from my mothers nurse. Her mother was in hospice care, and the nurse had just told her that her mother was probably going to pass today and that she should come right over to the house.

The patient started to cry because she felt so guilty that she was stuck in the hospital with a complication from her lung cancer while her mother could pass at any moment. She started fumbling with legal papers that she still needed to fill out, looking up phone numbers, and she pulled on her IV lines. She wanted to leave, but knew she had to stay. She rambled between sharing her feelings of guilt to telling me about her mother when she was growing up.

Her emotions were spiraling. I froze, watching her from the doorway. What should I do? What should I say? Should I offer a tissue? Put my hand on her shoulder? Get her nurse?