When Hope Becomes Torture

I'm breaking every rule telling you this but someone needs to say it. That patient who

coded last night? We brought him back three times. Three times. His family begged

us to keep going even though he was brain dead. We knew it. The doctors knew

it. But we had to keep breaking his ribs doing compressions because they couldn't

let go. I watched his daughter scream at us to do more while I'm literally pumping

a dead man's chest. Here's what nobody tells you about being an ER nurse. Sometimes saving

a life means knowing when to stop. Sometimes the family's hope becomes the patient's torture.

I went home and cried for an hour because I felt like we violated him. Tell me I'm wrong