A hospice nurse revealed the three things people under end-of-life care regret doing in life during an interview with Dr Karan Rajan on his podcast
A nurse has spoken about the ‘deathbed regrets’ of patients she has dealt with. Speaking to NHS surgeon and influencer Dr Karan Rajan on his podcast, nurse Julie McFadden broached the topic – without sugar-coating those final hours.
She opened up about how watching some of her patients die changed her life. Now the hospice and palliative care nurse is encouraging people to make changes to their lives.
She said the vast majority of her patients have at least one of the top three regrets she’s heard during her career. These include not appreciating their health, working too hard and relationship issues.
As Nurse Julie works in palliative care, most of her patients are often suffering for days, weeks, months or even years with terminal ill health. Because of this most of them share the regret of not fully “appreciating their health while they had it”.
She noted: “The number one thing people say to me: ‘I wish I would have understood how amazing it is to have a working body’.”
It has led her to being much more grateful for her healthy hard-working body every day. The second most common regret is working too much.
She advised: “Don’t work your life away, which is really easy to say. But I know it’s hard not to when you have bills to pay and things like that – but most people regret that.”
Finally, Julie revealed people often share a regret about how they handled relationships during their lives. Some may regret not maintaining a relationship or holding onto their grudges for too long – while others regret caring too much about what unimportant people in their lives think.
Referring to the first major regret, Dr Rajan chimed in. He noted that he’s also grown to appreciate his healthy body a lot more due to his work, especially after one particular patient.
He recalled: “I saw a young woman come in with pancreatitis right in her 20s. And you think, OK, pancreatitis, she doesn’t look too bad. Within three hours, this young woman’s in the intensive care unit.
“She’s intubated, ventilated. Next day she has passed away…No other medical conditions…
“And that just made me think like; ‘Wow, like, you know, I’m in my 30s now. I’m 34.’
“Life can just go in a flash. So yes, truly don’t take it for granted.
“We sometimes have this tendency to walk around like we’re immortal and immune to things. We’re really not.”
