But the innovation is not confined to the cold, hard and factual rigours of research. The development of instruments that can attenuate the suffering occasioned by life-shortening and terminal illness is perhaps one of the most innovative areas of medical research today, at a time when the focus on healthcare has never been as acute in the modern era. The science of palliative care is evolving, like the rest of the practice of medicine. Resolution 67.19 on Palliative Care, issued by the World Health Assembly (WHA) in 2014, states the provision of palliative care is a moral imperative of health systems and it should be integrated into all levels of healthcare. For starters, healthcare workers need to be trained and resourced to provide palliative care.
ENFOLD THEME WORDPRESS CANNOT UPDATE TEXT BLOCKS PROFESSIONAL
Although grief is inescapable, professional support and care is available at hospices and other institutions offering palliative care. These symptoms can include an inability to focus on anything other than the death, intense feelings of anger and sadness, feelings of hopelessness and difficulty processing the reality of their loss.īereavement is an inevitable life experience, but there is no need to manage it alone. This involves the continued presence of intense symptoms of depression and a loss of functional agency that persist longer than the average grieving period. Moreover, about 7% of those who experience bereavement suffer from what is termed “complicated grief”. This makes sufferers susceptible to further illness, often exacerbating symptoms in people with chronic health conditions. Profound grief can be accompanied by very real and sometimes debilitating symptoms of neurological, musculoskeletal, gastrointestinal and immunological origin. It is unsurprising that grievous loss affects individuals emotionally and spiritually, but also visits on them both mental and physical suffering. Our reason and human experience tend to amplify the pain of loss through our self-constructed hierarchies of psychosocial reaction. However, normal grief is a powerful, multifaceted and instinctive response of all sentient beings, as intense in their specific appreciation of loss as we are as human beings. Many people, professionals included, mistakenly believe that grief is a single emotion. It provides deeper professional and scientific insights into the care of those with life-threatening or terminal illness. Grief and Bereavement is a compulsory module in palliative care training. It is also a medical and psychosocial scientific discipline and offers insights to society about the necessity of palliative care for those with life-threatening illness. Palliation certainly does this, but it encompasses so much more. Palliative care is frequently misunderstood as the management of a person’s living journey in the face of terminal disease until their death, by bringing them a measure of comfort and dignity in the process. This often leaves survivors without the necessary closure and burdened by persistent and often debilitating sorrow. This essential instinct does not always manifest, especially in times of mass deaths, as we witnessed during the pandemic. This emphasises the need to integrate the discipline of palliative care into undergraduate training to better equip professionals to mitigate emotional trauma and grief in a more focused manner than simply demonstrating empathy with those affected.īereavement encompasses grief, the evolutionary mechanism that helps all sentient beings to not only process the pain of the loss of loved ones, but to also enfold memory into their consciousness to allow them to continue with the life journey we all have to complete.
The consequences of experiencing the death of loved ones in this cold way is, however, doubly traumatising for the survivors.
Of course, patients with severe contagious disease must be sequestered.
One of the most tragic outcomes of our deep disquiet with death and our fierce commitment to preserving life at all costs is epitomised in the starkly tragic images of people dying in isolation from their loved ones. The recently released Report of the Lancet Commission on the Value of Death highlights that death and dying has been over medicalised, sanitised and removed from the view of broader society.
0 kommentar(er)
