Helping doctors to grieve the traumatic loss of a patient

In a preliminary study, Dr. Elaine Kasket from the London Metropolitan University carried out detailed interviews with eight US physicians about their experiences of death. Half of those she spoke to wept as they recounted stories of traumatic death they had experienced as physicians, even though some of those events had occurred as much as 30 years ago. She goes on and explains how there is an unwritten rule for doctors that says it isn't wise or possible for doctors to feel the emotions over a patients death because there is always another patient to help.th

The reality is that doctors and other medical professionals regularly encounter traumatic patient death, and medical culture does not tend to acknowledged the possibility that they need support to help them deal with the grief and emotional disturbance they may experience. The writer is not convinced that it is helpful that creating a shell is the best way of coping with the trauma on the job. She concludes that there needs to be a change in the medical culture that will make support available and not allow it to be stigmatized, to help them cope with the grief, despair, and sadness that comes from a patient death.

This is so profound and brings up a recent conversation I had with a friend of mine who is an EMT and who would had responded to our 9-1-1 call had he not gone off his shift. He told me that the department makes available grief counseling, but VERY few EMT's even take advantage of that service. As the writer suggests above there seems to be an unwritten rule which says it is not OK to show your despair, sadness and depression because if you do you are unfit for the job.

About a year ago I learned that the husband of a friend of my wife committed suicide. He had been a surgeon. I wonder in light of this research whether he was simply unable to process the emotions when one of his patients died?

The bottom line is we need to change the culture and give our medical provider's permission to seek help when they suffer the loss of one of their patients with out stigmatizing them. These professionals will be better at meeting the needs of their patients when they are given permission to work on resolving the emotions of previous losses.