Not all patient deaths require reflective learning but they often need something. Frequent exposure to death and dying is linked to compassion fatigue. The accumulated experience of death and dying may result in grief being repressed or unprocessed simply to keep going. Grief can be a contributing factor to burnout.

I can recall, as a 21-year-old student district nurse, my first palliative patient down to the message in his wife's Valentine's card. Like most of us, I remember my first patient death, my first CPR. At 24, in ITU, I struggled to navigate a personal loss of my own - if only I'd known my avoidance of certain patients was a coping mechanism and not that I 'wasn't cut out for nursing'.

Many more experiences have settled on top of these, yet what makes these so vivid, never far from the surface, so visceral? And how have these informed who I am as a nurse, partner, mother, daughter, sister, friend, colleague?

In creating a confidential, informal space for teams to come together and talk about death and dying within the context of the work they do, staff are able to reflect on and share thoughts and feelings associated with this aspect of their role in a validating space. They can talk about patients that have resonated and situations that have stayed with them.

Co-facilitated with staff wellbeing psychologists, who are funded by the Guy's & St Thomas' Charity, the initiative began in the community but has since proven successful among multiple disciplines working in proximity to death and dying. Feedback indicates benefits to improved patient care, team dynamics, and in reducing burnout. It is proving to be a much needed and valuable space for us to appreciate how we are shaped by this 'part of the job' not just as practitioners, but as the people we return to being when we leave work.