Working in a medical field, especially in hospital, means death is an inevitable encounter, and nothing can ever really prepare one for death. Death is not usually an over coffee type of conversation, and most times we never really touch on it. When you become a health science, specifically for me as a physiotherapy student, it is still a topic you rarely cover until you get exposed to it in a clinical setting, the you are forced to deal with it.
As a therapist on most occasions you get to build a relationship with your patient, you get to understand their goals, and ultimately you work towards getting them better. Losing a patient can be an emotionally challenging thing to do.as much as we have healthy professional engagements with the patients, we usually get little attached to them.
At the beginning of this year, on my second block, I was in neuro surgical ICU, as much as the ICU is seen as place where death should be expected, I had a fairly good block. I had this lady Miss L, who I had been seeing for 3 of the 5 weeks I was there, at the beginning of 3rd week, they said she was not for active rescuss and they could not excubate her. Although her prognosis was bad, when after treating her one morning, I came back from lunch and she had passed on. I could not really deal with her death really well, as much as we had never had a verbal communication, I felt like she was part of my daily routine I knew her, I would talk with her. The following day, I woke up and I felt like I wasn’t really purposeful towards my patients, as much as I knew her death was not my fault and there wasn’t really anything I could do for her , more than I was already doing for her.
The remaining 2 weeks, another patient I had seen in ICU, who was now in recovery, also passed away, as much as his death was unexpected, it wasn’t as hard to deal with as my firth death. Suring the remaining course of the year, I had other blocks I had other patients who died, I learnt that as much as there were those few that as much as I worked to better them, there wasn’t more I could have done. Despite all of this, I still have not really figured out how to deal with death, but realising as much as you treat (clinically) patients like family, so as you deliver a well rounded treatment, you need to build a healthy distance to know, they are not people you keep all your emotional attachments to, as you have a lot of them to service.
2 thoughts on “Meaning ful life and death : Dealing with death”
Hello Unathi .I enjoyed reading your piece .I like how you introduced your story it gave a good direction on where you were heading with your story.I’m sorry for what you had to go through but as therapist we do somehow find ourselves attached to our patients because we tend to build relationships with them because we want to create a good and productive rehab relationship so do not feel bad for feeling a bit emotionally attached to your patients.However I feel like you would have added some literature that will explain your experience and give some views on how to cope with such situations
Hi Unathi,
I would firstly like to compliment you on a good reflective writing piece. The fact that you are addressing the topic of death is commendable as it is a fairly unaddressed subject within our curriculum. Your writing style is quite personalised as it is mainly reflective. This captures the attention of the reader , as we are able relate to realism thereof.
Death is often sugar coated and overlooked by subjects either leading up to death (effects of sedentary living, euthanasia and even critical care unit interventions). Connotations to these topics are often preventative measures aimed at reducing detrimental complications or allowing progression of primary and secondary implications within a clinical setting.
With that said, I feel like death is a topic that you cannot be prepared for and deal with in a systematic manner, as you would with every other physiotherapy intervention. Hereby, when confronted with a patient who had passed away, it cannot be presumed that everyone will react in a desired manner.
Professional rapport is crucial within a clinical setting in addition to an holistic approach to patient care. My advice to you would be that you shouldn’t become despondent and question your capabilities as a physiotherapist when experiencing the death of a patient. Should you apply the necessary principles and treat your patient accordingly, there would be no need to question your ability as a therapist. As you would have done all you could within the safest of parameters.
Furthermore, an emotional response to death is completely normal, do not beat yourself up over this either because at the end of the day, you are a human being. Though ,maintaining a professional rapport will protect you from having an increased emotional attachment to your patients.
In conclusion with the topic of death, it should be considered that educationalists should introduce much more consideration to the fact, through finding certain teaching and learning methods that are appropriate to this challenging subject. The resultant effect hereof should be that students feel an increasing feeling of preparation for what they might encounter (Williams, Wilson and Olsen, 2005).
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Reference List
Williams, C., Wilson, C., & Olsen, C. (2005). Dying, Death, and Medical Education: Student Voices. Journal Of Palliative Medicine, 8(2), 372-381. http://dx.doi.org/10.1089/jpm.2005.8.372
https://iepcourse.wordpress.com/2018/03/26/dealing-with-physiotherapy-students-coping-strategies-and-what-should-the-university-do-about-it/