Grief is like the ocean; it comes in waves, ebbing and flowing. Sometimes the water is calm, and sometimes it is overwhelming. All we can do is learn to swim.
There's a course every medical student gets to do before he or she graduates that we call, Breaking Bad News.
This is a very important course for us that when you don't know it might cost you passing as it would always be represented in the final year exams broadly classified under ethics.
I never saw the relevance of this course when I was hearing it was a great determination of your success in medical school,but then, when I got to offer the course , I appreciated it and saw why such relevance was accorded to it.
Imagine you did an investigation and someone was HIV positive, someone was diabetic, someone was hypertensive, someone had cancer just to name but a few,
Did you know that just the way you approach the patient with this information matters a lot and changes the whole perception of the illness?
- Madam, your result is out and you're HIV positive, bye bye
Will never be the same as:
- Madam, your test results are out and you have tested positive for HIV virus which means you have HIV but, there are medications that will enable you live still live a healthy life if adhered to....
These two sentences conveyed the same information but then, don't you feel the patient receiving the second news will have a little bit hope that all is well whereas the first patient might even commit suicide.....
I guess you too gets to appreciate the relevance of the course.
Accepting some of the life happenings such as death of a loved one, chronic illnesses and others isn't really an easy thing and we will always choose the 0.1% chance of it been a lie over the 99.9% evidences pointing it as truth before us.
When a patient receives such news, there are few stages he or she will pass through but the time such phases varies from one person to another and of course, not everyone gets to pass through all the phases as it is listed
They includes:
- Denial
This is the phase where the person literally feels it's unreal, he or she is very far from reality and keeps saying, "it's not possible? how can it be?"
Trying to connect every possible dots ensuring they all tilt towards what he wants to believe that it can't be true.
They wear the garment of disbelief and feel numb.
- Anger
The person gradually tilts to anger.
The frustrations and feeling of helplessness about his current predicament quickly transforms to anger which may be directed to himself or transferred aggression to anyone around him or her.
- Bargaining
Here, the patient tries to reach agreement with higher beings just to know if there's a way it could be reversed. They keep thinking of the, "what ifs and only ifs statement" they would have done which would have prevented that from happening.
- Depression
Finally, it's getting too real to be a joke and the fear of accepting the truth sends them to depression.
They feel empty, sad and lonely.
- Acceptance
Finally they get to accept the condition.
Maybe for loss of loved one, they accept that he or she is gone forever and for chronic illness, they accept medications and start treatment.
That's it! It's never an easy process, not on the doctor neither is it for the patient but we will all be fine in the end.
Just like the opening quote said, amidst all life circumstances, we will still learn how to swim and move with the wave especially for things we can't change.
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Thanks for reading and have a nice day