For families in medicine, it s been a year of fear and loss nytimes.com - get the latest breaking news, showbiz & celebrity photos, sport news & rumours, viral videos and top stories from nytimes.com Daily Mail and Mail on Sunday newspapers.
Gabrielle Dawn Luna sees her father in every patient she treats.
As an emergency room nurse in the same hospital where her father lay dying of Covid last March, Ms. Luna knows firsthand what it’s like for a family to hang on to every new piece of information. She’s become acutely aware of the need to take extra time in explaining developments to a patient’s relatives who are often desperate for updates.
And Ms. Luna has been willing to share her personal loss if it helps, as she did recently with a patient whose husband died. But she has also learned to withhold it to respect each person’s distinct grief, as she did when a colleague’s father also succumbed to the disease.