{"id":35135,"date":"2015-09-08T09:35:10","date_gmt":"2015-09-08T08:35:10","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/stg-blogs.bmj.com\/bmj\/?p=35135"},"modified":"2015-09-08T11:11:00","modified_gmt":"2015-09-08T10:11:00","slug":"richard-smith-disciplined-for-being-human","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/stg-blogs.bmj.com\/bmj\/2015\/09\/08\/richard-smith-disciplined-for-being-human\/","title":{"rendered":"Richard Smith: Disciplined for being human"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"richard_smith_2014\"<\/a>\u201cDoctors need to bring something of themselves to their patients, to make a personal connection, if medicine is to be a healing science,\u201d writes an anonymous obituarist, somewhat portentously, at the end of an obituary of Oliver Sacks<\/a>. But if you\u2019re a nurse you might be disciplined for such a human healing action.
\nA nurse told me this story at the end of my lecture, Death: the Upside<\/em>, at the Edinburgh Festival. She comes from a culture more comfortable than ours with death and speaking directly. She\u2019d been looking after a young man who was dying. It was her duty, so she told me, to ask his wife whether once dead the man should be buried or cremated. The wife was understandably distressed. In an attempt to help the nurse described that she found being able to visit her father\u2019s grave a great comfort. She wasn\u2019t dictating the couple\u2019s choice but offering a piece of her own experience.<\/p>\n

The wife complained. Her grief, like most grief, probably included anger. She perhaps complained about many things. That would be understandable.<\/p>\n

What wasn\u2019t understandable was that the nurse was disciplined, although perhaps death was important here as well. The health system had let a young man die. It had failed. Those in charge may unconsciously have sought a scapegoat.<\/p>\n

The nurse didn\u2019t spell out her punishment, but it seemed to involve a spell away from work. But what bothered her\u2014and perhaps prompted her to share her story with me\u2014was that it was thought wrong to offer something of herself. \u201cYou must offer nothing of yourself. You are a professional. It is not professional to share stories from your personal experience,\u201d say the authorities through such an action.<\/p>\n

What could be more absurd? Healers, as the obituary writer says, share something of themselves, as Oliver Sacks clearly did. Technocrats don\u2019t, but people don\u2019t want technocratic nurses; they want human nurses, with all the flaws and fallibility that are part of being human, to help them through their suffering.<\/p>\n

See also:<\/p>\n