Physicians' Experiences with Patients' Deaths

For physicians, encountering a patient's death can be complex and may involve issues of personal meaning and emotional connection. As meaning and connection shape experiences, so experiences shape purpose and, understanding affecting encounters and relationships with others. It is through this living process that individuals learn and grow. Physicians' experiences and learning have an impact on how they care for patients and how they view their own work. This work examines physicians' experiences with patients' deaths. It shows that physicians learned from patients' death and that learning was more often related to communication than medical care. Physicians also derived personal meaning from their experiences and felt deep emotional connections with their patients and the families of patients, long remembering emotionally powerful deaths. Non-physicians may find the experiences recounted here provide insight into the world of medicine. Providing effective care for dying patients and their families can be a powerful way to help physicians connect, or re-connect, to the meaning of their work.