By Genesis Alejandro, Hospice Nurse, Hospice Outreach Service, Cancer Relief Gibraltar
My name is Genesis. I have been working in the UK for the last 10 years, mostly in paediatric Recovery, and my last 4 years were in the Neonatal Intensive Care Unit. This job as a hospice nurse has changed my comfort zone 360 degrees, taking me to a new perspective that, until now, was scary, avoided by myself, and one I was reluctant to deal with… until I found how deep and unique it could be. So, I would like to speak not about cures, procedures, or breakthroughs, but about something quieter—something often overlooked. I would like to talk about nursing in the moments when life draws to a close. Because it is there, in the final hours, that nursing reflects most clearly what it truly is.
In dying matters, nursing becomes a mirror. A mirror of compassion. A mirror of presence. A mirror of what it means to care, not just clinically—but humanly.
When medicine has done all it can, it is often a nurse who remains. It is the nurse who holds the hand, adjusts the pillow, and listens to the silence. It is the nurse who becomes the last witness to a life, the last guardian of a person’s dignity.
In those moments, nursing does not fade into the background. It comes into full light. Because in dying matters, we see care in its rawest form—not about fixing, but about being. Being present. Being gentle. Being strong when families feel they cannot.
And it matters. It matters more than we may ever know. Families remember how their loved ones were treated at the end. They remember the calm voice, the soft touch, the way a nurse made death feel a little less frightening, a little more sacred.
But dying matters not only reflect nursing. They also shape us. As nurses, we don’t leave those moments unchanged. We carry them—in our hearts, in our practice, and in how we define what it means to be a healer.
So, we should not shy away from death in our profession. We should not see it as failure. Let us see it as the profound opportunity it is—to honour life even as it ends.
Because in dying matters, nursing reflects its deepest truth: that presence is sometimes the greatest gift we can offer.
