Monday, September 22, 2008
Support for Healthcare workers
I had my cardio placement on the oncology ward at royal perth hospital. This was a challenging placement as a few of my patients passed away whilst I was there. Each of the patients are facing an uphill battle and many are palliative. These are huge considerations with any treatment that we as physiotherapists may carry out. Many of the patients are in the hospital for extended periods or are frequent visitors to the ward as they come in for their chemotherapy treatments. You get to know the patients quite well as you see them fairly often and strong connections are built. When or if these patients pass away it makes it very difficult to deal with. It's easy to say not to get too personally involved but we're in a profession that involves caring for people and we just can't help it sometimes. Mostly we are able to deal with the death of a patient in a professional manner but occasionally this may affect you on a deeper level. As I have said, a few of my patients passed away. I was able to deal with these pretty well. I felt supported in the knowledge that there was a nurse councellor on the ward and that if I needed anyone to talk to about this I could. I just thought that it would be a good point to mention to other students that there should always be some form of councelling available in most workplaces and it's would be a good idea to find out where this support can be gained before you need it. I think that I was able to deal with my patient's passing away as I knew that there was this support in place if I needed it. So as students and even when we are finally out there in the workplace find out where your support networks lie!!
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You are lucky that you had a supportive environment to help you deal with people dying. On my gerontology placement, i experienced the death of my first patient, and it was worse because he wasn`t that sick or that old, but he had a sudden heart attack. I was very uspet, but when i told my supervisor, she just said "Oh well, these things happen" and left it at that. I felt a bit shocked that she was so desensitised to death, and I know in time we will all become used to it. But I was a bit disappointed that she did not offer me any opportunity to talk about it. Luckily one of the other physios was close by and she pulled me aside later on so we could talk about it. After all, it is still someones life that has passed, and we should always respect that and not act too indignent about death.
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