Healthcare Workers and Patient Expectations of Death - Essay Example

HEALTH CARE WORKERS AND PATIENT EXPECTATIONS OF DEATH Health Care Workers and Patient Expectations of Death In a Sisters of Charity Hospice ofstudent) (university) July 19, 2011 HEALTHCARE WORKERS AND PATIENT EXPECTATIONS OF DEATH Healthcare Workers and Patient Expectations of Death This paper seeks to contribute concepts on expectations of death among patients, and the role of healthcare workers in assisting these patients. In this study, the patients are abandoned elders waiting death due to old age or terminal ailment.

The healthcare workers are the Sisters of Charity and their nursing staff, who assist the patients through the mission set up by Mother Teresa for alleviation of the abandoned sick and dying in many parts of the world. Focus is on information gathered from a chaplain of the Sisters of Charity Hospice for the elderly and terminally ill. Interview with the Chaplain Fr. R.J. is a 30 year-old Roman Catholic priest, on study leave abroad from his chaplaincy with the Sisters of Charity Hospice for the Aged in Manila, Philippines.

He explained that the Hospice was set up in the 1980s, and it provides healthcare services for sick and dying elders. The Sisters of Charity can be traced to the charismatic Mother Teresa of India, who spread her Christian humanitarian mission in peasant countries of the world. Asked about his perceptions of the work of the Sisters of Charity in Manila, Fr. R.J. said they provide medical and humanitarian care to elders who have been abandoned by their poverty-stricken families. As to his knowledge about the expectations of death among the patients, Fr. R.J.

stressed his spiritual role in hearing confessions and counselling. He added to say that foremost among the apprehensions of the elders were their fear of the unknown in passing awayfrom life, feeling of loss and isolation from their family, and the final pain of dying added to the continuing pain caused by terminal ailment. Asked about the healthcare workers in the Hospice, Fr. R.J. mentioned the laudable work of the Sisters of Charity who provide medical and terminal care services through a hired doctor, two professional nurses, and half-a-dozen medical aides.

Everything is free for the patients, including needed medicine, food, and other amenities. The Sisters, the Chaplain, and the healthcare workers bridge the gap, so to say, between the negative apprehensions about death and the needed assurance, solace and peaceful acceptance of the inevitable which face the patients. As to requests from patients, Fr. R.J. mentioned that visit or contact with their families have been asked by some of the elders, but unfortunately this request was responded to only in a few instances.

All the sick and dying elders have been abandoned for good, leaving out the possibility of any family connections even during their last moments in life. HEALTHCARE WORKERS AND PATIENT EXPECTATIONS OF DEATH Findings and conclusions Death is met individually, but a study from the Victorian Web has typified two opposite poles of expectations derived from two fiction novels: that of fear/ loss/sadness of Anodos in Phantastes as opposed to the sense of victory/heroism/a good life of Pip in Great Expectations (2011 ).

From the interview, patients of the Hospice suffer the extreme end of negative expectations of fear of death, desertion from loved ones, and a painful demise. However, the Sisters of Charity and their healthcare workers are doing so much in bringing patients to the other end of positive expectations by means of Christian care, solace and peace in meeting the end in life. Medical scholars have identified 5 categories of Normative Expectations of Death, namely: (1) awareness and acceptance (2) open communication (3) living one’s life till the end (4) taking care of one’s final responsibility (5) dealing adequately with emotions (Goldstein, 2011).

The work of the Sisters, the Chaplain and the healthcare workers have bearing on the normative expectations of death. The religious culture of Christian faith and charity by the Sisters of Charity in the Hospice is holistic as it cares for the physical needs (hospital and medical care), psychological alleviation (personal contact and services by caregivers), and spiritual counsel (by a chaplain who assuage the patents’ transit into the unknown world of the afterlife) for the terminally sick.

If there is a particular and most significant learning on the study, it is that the family plays a principal role in supporting the terminally aged-and- ill, but unfortunately family intervention is not within the capacity of the Hospice to provide. HEALTHCARE WORKERS AND PATIENT EXPECTATIONS OF DEATH References Goldstein, M. et al. Terminally Ill Patients Dealing With Normative Expectations Around Death and Dying. Retrieved from http://www.ncbi.nim.nih.gov/pubmed/16872786 Victorian Web, Death in Phantastes and Great Expectations, Retrieved from http://www.

victorianweb.org/authors/gm/deathhtml