Palliative Care
When I began my training as a clinical clerk, less than a year ago, despite hours of teaching, I equated palliative care with death. After all, donʼt all palliative care patients die? And how else would a naive clerk define death? I equated it with defeat.
Had I not just spent two years learning how to help people live? I saw palliative care as a failure: everything about it was negative: no, we are not going to resuscitate; no, we are not going to offer curative treatment; no, this patient will not live. My attitude towards palliative care was only reinforced by a certain incident during my surgical rotation. Our patient was an 87 year-old demented woman with multiple co-morbidities who had just had surgery the day before. She was now presenting with new-onset delirium and was diagnosed with aspiration pneumonia.
When we saw her that morning, her breathing was quick and labored. Her heart was racing and the levels of oxygen in her blood were dropping at an alarming rate.
Although she could only moan, it was evident that she was suffering. But, when we, the surgical team, saw her, we refused to consult palliative care, though both we and the family were distressed by our patientʼs suffering. Palliation was in effect, equated with failure: to the members of the team, asking palliative care to come was like saying that the surgery we had performed the day before had killed her. This, was not acceptable.
Thus palliative care, in my maleable mind, had come to be equated with medical surrender and it was with trepidation that I approached my month on the palliative care ward. The time I have spent on the palliative care unit has opened my eyes to the fact that death is neither defeat, nor is it a medical failure. I no longer think of death and palliation in terms of denial. Through my palliative care experience I have learned to confront mortality and in the healing of dying patients, have been myself healed. I remember
Had I not just spent two years learning how to help people live? I saw palliative care as a failure: everything about it was negative: no, we are not going to resuscitate; no, we are not going to offer curative treatment; no, this patient will not live. My attitude towards palliative care was only reinforced by a certain incident during my surgical rotation. Our patient was an 87 year-old demented woman with multiple co-morbidities who had just had surgery the day before. She was now presenting with new-onset delirium and was diagnosed with aspiration pneumonia.
When we saw her that morning, her breathing was quick and labored. Her heart was racing and the levels of oxygen in her blood were dropping at an alarming rate.
Although she could only moan, it was evident that she was suffering. But, when we, the surgical team, saw her, we refused to consult palliative care, though both we and the family were distressed by our patientʼs suffering. Palliation was in effect, equated with failure: to the members of the team, asking palliative care to come was like saying that the surgery we had performed the day before had killed her. This, was not acceptable.
Thus palliative care, in my maleable mind, had come to be equated with medical surrender and it was with trepidation that I approached my month on the palliative care ward. The time I have spent on the palliative care unit has opened my eyes to the fact that death is neither defeat, nor is it a medical failure. I no longer think of death and palliation in terms of denial. Through my palliative care experience I have learned to confront mortality and in the healing of dying patients, have been myself healed. I remember