(tldr; one of our patients had a heart attack after picking up his meds and died. We were the last people to see and speak to him)

I’m a pharmacy technician at an independent pharmacy with a total of 4 staff members. Our patients are mostly older, with some of them being patients of ours for over a decade, some even longer. We also have a very low volume, maybe 100 scripts a day at most, so we get to know our patients very well. One of our older patients was a 90 year old, extremely sweet gentleman. For his age, he was very mobile, was driving, and was still very sharp. Only prescriptions were low dose blood pressure and cholesterol meds. Yesterday he came in as normal to pick up his prescriptions for the month. He was smiling, cracking jokes, and acting very normal. When he to pull his car out of the parking lot, it bumped into the car behind him, and stayed there. A minute or so later a patient from a doctors office in our building returned to the parking lot and found him slumped over. She ran back to her doctor who came out and found him unresponsive with no pulse. He called 911 and began to perform chest compressions. This man also had a very kephotic spine, and so the compressions were very awkward and it was difficult to support his back. It was at this point we realized something was happening and came out to see what was going on. By then, the paramedics had arrived (we work two blocks from our city’s main hospital) and took over chest compressions and the doctor told us what had happened. One of our other techs was very emotional but had the forethought to print out his medical records from our computer for the ambulance. We kept his car in our parking lot over night. We called the former owner of our pharmacy and close friend to the patient that day and asked if there was any news and he told us our patent had passed. I keep replaying his last moments in my head. I’m still thinking about if we missed any signs, what would have happened if we could have assisted (both me and my pharmacist are BLS trained), the idea that we were the last people who spoke to him and saw him. I can’t really talk about this stuff with anyone so I wanted to hear everyone’s thoughts. Anyone ever have a patient death affect them? I’d love to hear peoples stories.

(Names and details have been changed to protect patient info)