In the hospital, we experience death and dying daily but because we are
so used to seeing it everyday that it has become "ordinary"...in other
words, a part of our daily routine, so that hospital workers are
perceived to be callous to pain and suffering. How often do I get
complaints about how our emergency room staff behaves while the dead
patient is still in the ER...like how they could be seen talking and kidding
around while finishing up their work. Is this apathy?
I prefer to call it coping. It's not that we do not feel the pain and
suffering...but dealing with it 24/7 can drain a person emotionally and
mentally. So the fear is always that
if hospital workers do not learn to distance themselves emotionally
from their patients, they will not be able to do their work. I remember
as a young intern I used to cry when I see my charity patients dying. I felt so much anger not because they were
dying, but that they were poor and I wished I could do more but did not since I too had limited resources. I would also cry for the elderly because they reminded me of my grandmother and
other people's grandmother, who in their old age needed to feel the presence of their families. But the worst deaths were the ones with no
one to grieve for them, yet strangely I don't feel as sad or angry. I often wondered about this and I came to the conclusion that maybe because patients whose families are disinterested with their care, also makes me less interested in them and therefore I don't form
any connection to the patient. But yes, I would
feel some guilt because I knew deep inside me that I should have cared more.
