The Inner Lives of Doctors: Physician Emotion in the Care of the Seriously Ill

Childers, Julie; Arnold, Bob

doi:10.1080/15265161.2019.1674409

Cited by 23 publications

(13 citation statements)

References 40 publications

Supporting

Mentioning

Contrasting

Order By: Relevance

“…Our study participants reported a ‘sense of injustice’ when young patients die, relating similarly to Childers and Arnold’s study where the death of patients who were not ‘supposed’ to die provoked strong emotional upheavals in physicians. The fact that these deaths were not routine and were unexpected affected the emotions of the physicians involved 20…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Burnout in Palliative Care - Difficult Cases: Qualitative Study

Koh

Gallardo

Khoo³

et al. 2022

BMJ Support Palliat Care

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

ObjectivesBurnout is common among palliative care clinicians, occurring as a result of emotions experienced in caring for challenging patients or families. Awareness of these scenarios helps clinicians and teams appropriately manage their own emotions and prevent burnout. We studied challenging clinical situations and the emotions encountered by experienced palliative care clinicians which could potentially contribute to burnout.MethodsA qualitative study was conducted using semistructured interviews with purposive sampling of 18 palliative care clinicians—5 doctors, 10 nurses and 3 social workers who worked in various palliative care settings (hospital palliative care team, home hospice and inpatient hospice). The interviews were recorded verbatim, transcribed and analysed using a thematic analysis approach.ResultsThe mean age of the interviewees was 52 years old and the mean number of years practising palliative care was 15.7 years (ranging from 10 to 25 years). The following clinical situations were reported by our respondents as particularly challenging, potentially leading to burnout: (1) abusive patients and families, (2) ‘bad deaths’, (3) death of young patients, (4) complex cases, and (5) having multiple deaths or difficult cases at any one time. Emotions encountered in the course of care of these cases included: (1) feeling overwhelmed, (2) having a sense of helplessness and failure, as well as (3) a sense of injustice.ConclusionThe challenging cases we described evoke strong emotional reactions from palliative care clinicians that need to be adequately addressed to prevent burnout.

show abstract

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Burnout in Palliative Care - Difficult Cases: Qualitative Study

Koh

Gallardo

Khoo³

et al. 2022

BMJ Support Palliat Care

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…[24][25][26][27][28] Difficult conversations are part of an oncologist's daily workload, and yet research suggests that responsibility for life-and-death decision making is quite difficult for oncologists who are caring for patients near death. [29][30][31][32] Our study calls attention to the pandemic as a teachable moment on the importance of primary palliative care skills training for all physicians on aligning treatment with individual preferences using excellent communication skills and sound symptom management. 33,34 Critical federal policy proposals such as H.R.647, the Palliative Care and Hospice Education Training Act, would have increased nationwide research and training in palliative care prior to the COVID-19 pandemic, but it was stalled for several years in Congress despite bipartisan support.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“I'm Being Forced to Make Decisions I Have Never Had to Make Before”: Oncologists' Experiences of Caring for Seriously Ill Persons With Poor Prognoses and the Dilemmas Created by COVID-19

Perumalswami

Chen

Martin

et al. 2022

JCO Oncology Practice

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

PURPOSE: The COVID-19 pandemic has created a new set of problems for clinicians. This study examines the experiences of oncologists providing care to seriously ill persons near the end of life in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic. METHODS: Between January 2020 and August 2020, we conducted semistructured, in-depth individual interviews with 22 purposefully sampled oncologists from practices enrolled in the Michigan Oncology Quality Consortium. Deidentified transcripts of the interviews were examined using thematic analysis. RESULTS: Our respondents described several novel problems created by the COVID-19 pandemic, including: (1) ethical challenges, (2) the need to manage uncertainty—physically and emotionally—on the part of both patients and oncologists, and (3) the difficulty of integrating technology and communication for seriously ill persons. These problems were made more complex by features of the pandemic: resource scarcity (and the need to fairly allocate poor resources), delays in care, high levels of fear, and the increased importance of advance care planning. Nonabandonment served as a way to cope with increased stress, and the use of telemedicine became an increasingly important medium of communication. CONCLUSION: This study offers an in-depth exploration of the problems faced by oncologists as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic and how they navigated them. Optimal decision making for seriously ill persons with cancer during the COVID-19 pandemic must include open acknowledgment of the ethical challenges involved, the emotions experienced by both patients and their oncologists, and the urgent need to integrate technology with compassionate communication in determining patient preferences.

show abstract

“…The higher level of stress motivates them even more to take some action and find solution, also by means of greater readiness for cooperation. However this evokes a question about their emotional state in such situations [19][20][21]. We can hypothesize that while being ready to act and cooperate they tend to suppress their, which later on translates to the burn out syndrome, as described by many researchers [22][23][24][25][26].…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Communication competence and the intensity of anxiety and stress in medical staff – a preliminary report

Szułdrzyński¹,

Cyranka²,

Konopka³

et al. 2020

Arch Psych Psych

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Communication competencies are crucial in healthcare. Medical staff is exposed to increased emotional stress. It is still unclear, whether the level of communication competencies correlates with stress associated with professional work in healthcare providers. The aim of this study was to determine this relationship and investigate the models of coping with stress among different professional groups in the hospital wards. Methods: The study involved interviewing medical personnel (N=93, 69 female, doctors, nurses, psychologists) to collect the psychological parameters including stress, anxiety, coping strategies and communication skills. Results: Nurses use less often task oriented coping with stress than doctors, while psychologists have higher level of avoidance-oriented style than doctors and nurses. Important associations between readiness for cooperation and the stress levels in doctors (positive) and psychologists (negative) were detected. The level of communication barriers correlated strongly negatively with the level of stress in psychologists. There are important relationships between cooperation and stress levels, individual communication style and anxiety levels. Conclusions: Healthcare professionals use various coping strategies when exposed to stressful situations which depend partly on their profession. The coping strategies used correlate with the communication strategies. Moreover, the level of anxiety is associated with communication competence.

show abstract

The Inner Lives of Doctors: Physician Emotion in the Care of the Seriously Ill

Cited by 23 publications

References 40 publications

Burnout in Palliative Care - Difficult Cases: Qualitative Study

Burnout in Palliative Care - Difficult Cases: Qualitative Study

“I'm Being Forced to Make Decisions I Have Never Had to Make Before”: Oncologists' Experiences of Caring for Seriously Ill Persons With Poor Prognoses and the Dilemmas Created by COVID-19

Communication competence and the intensity of anxiety and stress in medical staff – a preliminary report

Contact Info

Product

Resources

About