For the longest time after I qualified, nobody ever died when I was on duty and in charge of the shift. I was absolutely terrified that someone would die and I wouldn’t know what to do, how to tell the family, how to lay them out, etc., because the only death I’d ever seen was as a first-year student nurse, when I just did what I was told by the staff nurse. So terror and sheer will-power kept everyone alive, at least until after I’d gone home, when all the ill patients would pop their clogs, some probably with a sense of relief. Honestly, it went on for several years, nobody ever died on my shifts, and so the prospect of patient death became even more terrifying.
An old man once asked me if he was dying - “No!” I said, “Nobody ever dies when I’m on duty!”
”Oh that’s good”, he said. “When are you off?”
”Half an hour.”
Anyway, eventually someone did die when I was in charge, had to happen really, and luckily my own GP’s wife was a patient on the ward, he was visiting her when another woman died, and bless his heart, he just took over everything when he saw the panic and horror on my face.
Of course when I went to work in ICU I became a dab hand at death.