https://www.infirmiere-canadienne.com/blogs/ic-contenu/2025/01/20/de-lautre-cote-du-rideau
The words we speak and the unseen actions we take can heal the dying and inspire those who live
Angeline Rachel Photography
“In the moment when my life hung in the balance, I was blessed to witness something few in my profession get to experience and even fewer get to understand. In a moment when I was fighting for my life, I experienced the healing power of unseen interactions,” Kent Soltys says.
I woke in the middle of the night with a strange feeling. One side of my body was numb, one side of my face was numb, and I was quickly losing the ability to speak, see, and hear. For a typically healthy individual, this was terrifying. The night ended with me back at the hospital where I work, being intubated by friends and colleagues.
For many years, I had worked as an emergency department nurse. I had seen countless cases, cared for thousands of people, and, like many ED nurses, I could let most of the trauma and horrors I witnessed roll off my back and hide somewhere deep within my subconscious.
I had comforted others in times of need, embraced tragedy, and witnessed unjust deaths. On many occasions, I had helped others navigate the unknown of an unprovoked and unexpected health emergency.
However, one cool November night in 2019, I was forced to live this horror. I was naked, scared, and knocking on death’s door in the very same place where I had laughed with my friends the night before.
Life is funny like that. One moment you are living, carefree, maybe not feeling invincible but not thinking about the fragility of your own mortality. In another moment, you are fighting for your chance to live another day.
That became my reality.
Years later, I would come to understand the trauma and emotions my friends faced while intubating me and watching my lifeless body being worked on.
My life hung in the balance
While this scenario had a happy ending — I am alive, have three beautiful and healthy children, and get to spend more time with my wonderful wife — it could easily have gone in another direction. In the moment when my life hung in the balance, I was blessed to witness something few in my profession get to experience and even fewer get to understand. In a moment when I was fighting for my life, I experienced the healing power of unseen interactions.
Throughout my professional life, I have heard from people I admire that it is the unseen actions we perform as health professionals that can make or break the patient’s experience. As nurses and health-care providers, we have the honour of helping those who cannot help themselves.
We are there to ease and comfort those who are dying. We are there to comfort a family when tragedy strikes. We are always there for those who are at their worst, but few that I know have had the experience of being a patient and then surviving to recall the way a caregiver made them feel. How a healing touch made them feel that they mattered.
There were moments when I was intubated, alone, and sedated that I knew who was caring for me. I understood the words, the calming voice, and the soft touch of those providing care. I could identify the difference between a calming and healing voice and an anxious, rushed, and bothered one. I could recall the words being spoken around my unconscious body. I perceived the stress and the love, the compassion, and the angst of those visiting me.
Even though I was unconscious, hooked up to a machine that kept me alive, I could sense the compassionate care and love around me. It was the first time I understood how the ways in which nurses work, as well as what we do, how we act, and how our tone, body language, and reasoning can affect those who cannot speak for themselves. From the explanation of tasks being performed to the temperature of the cloths and water that kept me clean, I was aware of it all.
I finally understood what care truly was
For years I had striven to provide comfort, compassion, and kindness to all those in my care. But like all humans, I am not perfect.
At times, I would enter a room or a patient interaction with a rushed or anxious tone and manner. When I was the patient, the seemingly lifeless human on the other side of the curtain, I finally understood how our actions as health professionals — what we do, and how we care — truly heal (or hinder) those under our care.
I finally understood how the words spoken to those we think cannot hear, matter. I finally understood how a gentle touch, or the explanation of tasks being performed, matters.
It was at my worst moment that I understood what care truly was: it is providing empathy, dignity, and compassion to all, even when you think they can’t hear. I believe it is the way in which I was cared for and loved by those around me that made me wish to continue the journey of living life.
Days after my initial intubation and after being airlifted to a major trauma centre, I was extubated and began the slow process of waking up. In these moments, I was both inspired and disgusted by the voices of the staff that reached my newly awakening ears.
Only hours after being extubated, I could hear members of the health-care team speaking at the nursing station. I heard the negative tone in their voices, their stress, and frustration.
As someone who has lived, worked, eaten, slept, and loved nursing, I understand how the stress of the job and the system can take a toll on nurses’ resolve, compassion, and resilience. Yet, I didn’t understand how much our collective voices mattered until I was the patient on the other side of the curtain.
It was then that, just trying to make sense of the world around me, I truly understood the expression “the walls have ears.” I was there, a proud human being, a husband, father, and nurse, listening to the conversations at the nursing station. The conversations revolved around trying to get me out to the general wards as soon as possible to clear the room.
I am familiar with the importance of making room due to high census — I have lived that struggle. But the conversations I was hearing, whether fully grasped by my traumatized brain or not, spoke of wanting to get me out so that I wouldn’t become a difficult and time-consuming patient.
While I have cleaned up the language for this article, what I was hearing was beyond my comprehension. I was not seen as a person or a colleague; I was being viewed and talked about as an inanimate burden.
It was during this conversation about burden that I heard a voice I believed to be angelic. It was the voice of a senior nurse with a beautiful British accent. Her words to the staff were simple, yet profound.
She stated, “There, but for the grace of God, go we,” and that as their colleague, patient, and a human being, my dignity and care should be of the highest standard.
Shortly after this moment, my care transformed. This wonderful and compassionate nurse got me into another room, helped care for me, took me to the shower, and helped me feel human again. She said, “It doesn’t take much to make a patient feel like a human, does it?” I replied “no,” and thanked her for her kindness, care, and compassion.
Moral of the story
The moral of my story is simple. Behind the curtains, you never know who is there. It should never matter for whom you are caring; your words and actions must come from a place of caring.
This experience led me down a path to understand how amazing members of the health-care team can reach a place of burnout, where the fundamental and compassionate reasons for entering nursing become lost.
My goal, from now until the time I die or retire, is to work with others to empower them and help them realize their potential. The true potential of all who are in the service of others is, and should be, to care for all as if they can hear the negative and experience the positive.
You never know whose life you can touch, even when they can’t hear, see, or react to your acts of kindness and compassion.
Kent Soltys, RN, BSN, is a clinical nurse educator and mentor working and living on Vancouver Island. He is also an advocate for supporting newly graduated nurses.
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