It is a sentence to banish from the register of a caregiver.
Pressure, responsibilities, stress, emotional load, complexity of cases … The career profession is difficult and does not improvise so much the human is central to it. The relationship with patients has its share of difficulties. You have to know how to listen, announce, explain, reassure, support, manage disagreements, worries …
A subject, above all, crystallizes all the difficulties of the profession of caregiver and in particular a doctor: that of dealing with one day or another to an end of life or death situation. As the Code of Medical Ethics recalls, “The doctor must accompany the dying to his last moments, ensure appropriate care and measures the quality of a life that ends, safeguard the dignity of the patient and comfort those around him “. Death is part of his daily life, it is he who is responsible for writing death certificates. Does it naturally become hermetic to death over the years?
No. For Dr. Pierre Socié, cardiologist at the Chartres hospitals (28) questioned by The Republican Echothe sentence “If you cry with each death, you have to change jobs” must be banished from the doctors’ register. On the contrary, according to this practitioner who is also president of an ethical committee “The day the death of a patient does not do anything to you, then, change your job”. The problem is that a taboo persists on the impact of death among caregivers: “The impact is unknown by the institutions and by the professionals themselves. They are all faced one day at the death of one of their patients which can lead to a psychological trauma” denounces Professor Thibaud Damy, cardiologist, who will offer several conferences on this theme in 2025.
“As a doctor and psychologist of a mobile palliative care team, we have often heard colleagues express their difficulties in these situations (end of life and death, note), whatever their profession, doctors, nurses, caregivers …” Share Stéphanie Träger and Lucile Rolland-Piègue, authors of the book “remain careful in front of death”. For them, “Addressing the subject of the end of life in a concrete way makes it possible to appease the caregivers. It is by daring to exchange on their emotions and questions that they manage to find a professional posture adapted to these situations”.