Death is defined as the cessation of all vital function: end of life (Merriam Webster dictionary, 2018). As a health professional, we frequently exposed to dying patients and death in the course of the work. This experience makes individuals conscious of their own mortality, often giving rise to anxiety and unease. But we as health professionals we are forced to act as if nothing happened and continue with the schedule of the day but deep down this is also affecting us physically, emotionally and mentally.

Clinical experience

This reminds me of my first 3rd-year block when I was working in one of the tertiary hospitals. On that day, I was in a medical ward treating a patient who was very sick the patient was in a terminal ill stage. I have been treating this patient for almost a week, one day when I was busy treating her, the patient just started marking weird sounds like grunting. I immediately stop my treatment and call the sister who was in charge of the ward she quickly ran to the ward and when she saw the patient she told me to go take the BP machine, which I did and when she check the patient’s BP it was 45/30 so I could see that I don’t have to continue the physio treatment I decided to stop and documented down everything that just happened, after that I left the ward.

When I came back after lunch I saw that the curtain where closed so I went an opened to see why the curtains were closed only to find out that the patient has died. I started blaming myself that if maybe I did not treat the patient, the patient was not going to die. The death of this patient affected me even though I did not know the patient I was deeply hurt, Since that day I started being conscious of my own death, I developed death anxiety, I struggled to sleep because when I sleep I will just think of that patient. I started being scared of treating patients that were in the terminal stage. according to ( Thiemann, et al., 2015) Health professionals have more frequent and intense contact with death and dying than most in society. Such contact may trigger death anxiety in some of the individuals. It is found that health professional’s especially medical students have a higher incidence of psychological distress than other students, which may in part be a result of their exposure to death and dying .

from the clinical experience that I went through since that day I wouldn’t want to treat patient that were terminal ill before I treat the patient I will first check the patient’s folder and read the patient’s notes to see if the patient is in the terminal stage because in my mind I have already had this thought that those patient are going to die, why waste my time and treat someone who is going to die? Why treat someone who might die in my hands or after treating them and cause trauma to myself? but the question is, is it supporse to be like this? are we supposed to judge patient’s according to their notes on the floder ?

Based on the literature above it is therefore conclusive that death affects health professionals in different ways and some of them end up making the decision that affects the patient’s in a negative way due to them failing to cope with deaths that they have to face every day in hospitals. I myself was also affected, losing the patient that I have been treating for a long time it really broke my heart so much, I personally feel that we as the medical student must receive mental awareness and psychological support after every block at least this will help us to determine how to handle stress, and make choices that at the end of the day will not affect anyone in a bad way.

 Reference list

Merriam-Webster, D. (2018). America’s most-trusted online dictionary.(2017). Merriam-webster. com.

Thiemann, P., Quince, T., Benson, J., Wood, D., & Barclay, S. (2015). Medical students’ death anxiety: Severity and association with psychological health and attitudes toward palliative care. Journal of pain and symptom management, 50(3), 335-342.