Meeting death - The impact ofthe doctor's emotions on the medical care of the patient

Abstract

Patient care must be taken in a global way, adopting a holistic model initially designed for the end of life care. Although the fact that practicing a palliative medicine may offer many rewards cannot be neglected, nobody doubts that the amount of time that physicians spend taking care of a seriously ill patient may be, simultaneously, a source of satisfaction and anxiety. A less discussed issue in the care of seriously ill patients concerns the strong emotions woken up in physicians by patients, and the changes that may come later. Its universal and normal for physicians to have feelings about their patients. Acceptance and awareness of this phenomenon are prerequisite to self-knowledge and self-control required in a professional patient-physician relationship. Regulating the degree off emotional engagement between doctor and patient is one of the fundamental developmental tasks of physicians. Almost all general practitioners describe the existence of a gap between hospital and general practice. In the absence of useful teaching on bereavement, most of the strategies are based on personal experiences. Thus, it is necessary a medical training in the conscious recognition of physicians emotions, as in regulating the degree of emotional engagement between doctor and patient. Collusion about emotions may lead to the development of models not suitable for formatting physicians and may conduct to burn-out and other forms of distress.