Thoughts about death

I'm currently in my "complex care" portion of nursing school, and thus my clinical experience is in critical care areas where patients are extremely sick. Most of my patients have been on ventilators, or had central lines, or have been comatose due to brain ischemia or infarct. Only some of those patients are on pain medications; though pain is a known phenomenon of being ill, if a patient cannot describe their pain, especially with the lower quality nurses I've observed, pain is not treated. Even more heartbreaking is the fact that when families are not present, patients in these states of dying are often ignored completely except for scheduled "maintenance", i.e. giving medications, turning them every two hours, cleaning wounds and changing dressings. The most compassionate person I have met is the medical assistant that bathes the patients; she is rough with everyone, but it is a necessary roughness (it takes a lot of strength to move a person alone). She takes the bottles and cans from nursing staff on the unit, turns them in for money, and buys specialty soaps and lotions for the patients on the floor. Most of the time when you visit the hospital, the smell is of sterility and excrement, but in the area I am working in, there frequently is an undertone of pleasant coconut, cucumber melon, or clean smelling soap.

I find it so depressing, so disheartening, that this field of nursing is supposedly so compassionate, but because we're so overwhelmed with all of the medical necessity, we tend to let the love of people go by the wayside. Because I have no responsibility yet, because I am not yet licensed, I often go stand by a patient's bedside and just hold their hand. They usually don't hold my hand back. I've cried, and I try to hide it because I feel so weak that I can't handle death well.

Am I not ready for this?