Nursing Experience

Case Description

In my case, the incident happened on April 16^th 2007 when a gunman fired about 180 gunshots to his fellow students and teachers in Virginia Technical School Institute and State University in a campus shooting spree. On that fateful day, the school experienced one of ever deadliest action in the history America. Early that morning, the twenty three year old Seung Hui Cho, who was an English major senior student at the school, had shot a female student and a male resident assistant in the dormitory. He then freed the scene. This had happened at around seven thirty in the morning and the two casualties did not survive the ordeal. The police attended the scene immediately and assuming that the incident was out of an isolated domestic love affair had pursued the boyfriend to the female as a suspect. This way, the identity of the shooter remained unknown till the next incident of shooting that happened about two hours later.

Having escaped unidentified during the first instance, Cho found his way to a post office in Virginia where he sent some photos and a video of some rattling about wealthy brats to the school. This was received only after the killings. At nine forty, Cho having had armed  himself with a nine millimeter pistol, another twenty two caliber machine and numerous ammunitions opened fire to students and instructors he had chain locked  in several classrooms (Levin, 2017). This rampage took place in about ten minutes causing a total death roll of twenty seven students and five teachers. About seventeen victims were severely wounded. The offender then committed suicide by inflicting gunshots to himself.

The Emergency Call

At that time I was working at Carilion Roanoke Memorial Hospital in the emergency room Resource pool and I had been on night duty the previous day. I had just arrived home when I was called back to the hospital urgently to help with seven casualties that had been received from the place of shooting (Levin, 2017). Most of the patients had been attended to at the local Hospital in Blacksburg, VA where the Virginia Technical School is located. The hospital management had anticipated to get more patients but because most of them had died immediately, we did not receive many. Nevertheless I helped in treating those that came.

Traumatic Nursing Experience

One of the casualties got a cardiac arrest during transportation to the hospital. He arrived to the hospital but was immediately pronounced dead. Not only was this traumatic to me because I had never attended to such a case, but also the fact that his mother’s phone kept ringing and I was unable to answer his mother haunted me (Levin, 2017). She had heard about the incident and was calling to enquire whether he was okay.

The Debriefing Meeting

Debriefing is usually carried out in all professions such as teaching, medical field, and social work. The professionals involved there seek to make the world a better place for the people to live in especially when faced with challenges in life such as sickness and distress. They learn the skill of helping people who are being faced with life challenges. However, some incidences happen like in the case of Virginia Technical massacre that makes the ones that are to help themselves fall into these challenges in form of trauma, stress and at times physical pain. At such time is when the need for crisis intervention training comes in (Ignatavicius et al, n.d.). The head manager calls for a meeting after the crisis and receives responses from the subordinates on their experiences after a moment of crisis. This is where various trainings are carried out to help them cope and resume duties without feeling much effect of the trauma. This is what happened on that day in my place of work. 

Immediately, in response to that traumatic event, a debriefing meeting was called by the hospital director so that all the staff and medical members of the hospital could acknowledge and share their distresses from this event. The participants involved the doctors, nurses, police, various managers, flight attendants and paramedics. Counseling sessions were offered to us by the hospital management so that each could go and nurse their shock appropriately in order to be able to resume to their normal duties effectively. I was able to utilize these counseling maximally by attending all the sessions. This made us better nurses with experience and who were able to handle crisis situations better in future. We were also made better team working professionals because we were able to work together very effectively during the emergency cases. The crises enhanced our teamwork and professional relations with each other.

Non Violent Case Training

As additional caution measure, the hospital also offered us training on how to approach nonviolent crisis cases as well in the future. This is a training that focuses on empathy and prevention of crisis occurrence. It equipped us and all the staff members of the hospital with tactics we could use to divert anxiety, hostility and violent behavior before an incident happens. It gave us the ideas on how behavior escalation can be noted and dealt with in the coolest possible way. I was made knowledgeable on how to deal with situations in moment of chaos. These are skills I apply in my nursing work even to date.  

Trauma in the Family

At that time own son was also in college which was a four hours away drive from  my place of work and had friend in Virginia Technical School and though none of his friends were shot or killed, the thought that this incident could also have happened in  their school kept haunting me(Ignatavicius et al, n.d.). It was trauma to the whole fraternity of Carilion Roanoke Memorial Hospital. I had to go to my son’s school the next weekend to spend some time with him and tell him that I loved him. My daughter at the time was in Junior High School and was at home with me. She like most of her age mates and everyone else also had a rough time dealing with the stress of this incident.  It took a lot of time for everyone to get back to normal daily businesses without being haunted by the events of that day. 

Effect on my Nursing

This event made me to rethink my career as a nurse. The seriousness of this profession hit my conscience that day and I resolved to take the career more seriously than I ever did. I saw a life wasting away in a matter of few moments as I was treating one of the casualties. I also learnt that as a life saver, panicking in time of crisis can be very fatal. We were all shocked by this event in the hospital and yet still none of us could afford to act in panic because lives were dependent on our response to the situation. It was a very critical self-evaluation moment for all of us at that time (Ryoo & Ha, 2015).  Every day I keep my motivation focused on offering the best I can in my career as I take care of other people’s needs. It has been ten years down the line but the events of that day still ring in my mind. The impact of that day shocked the whole nation. Every time it gets me distressed I attend counseling sessions and share with my colleagues who the event did not affect them because since then I have transferred to another hospital.

References

Ignatavicius, D., Workman, M., Blair, M., Rebar, C., & Winkelman, C. Medical-surgical nursing (1st ed.).

Levin, A. (2017). 10 Years Later, Virginia Tech Shooting Still Resonates on Campus. Psychiatric News, 52(10), 1-1. http://dx.doi.org/10.1176/appi.pn.2017.5b24Ryoo, E., & HA, E. (2015). The Importance of Debriefing in Simulation-Based Learning. CIN: Computers, Informatics, Nursing, 33(12), 538-545. http://dx.doi.org/10.1097/cin.0000000000000194