Healthcare is in a Stage of Grieving

“It’s not as though we can give life or death to our patients,” I sighed. “Some things are out of our control.”

“Of course we can! What do you think we do if it’s not giving life?” My colleague was incredulous that I would question the power of medicine.

In my formative years, the healthcare industry did seem to be imbued with god-like confidence. But then after spending just a little time working in a hospital, I realized medicine was a best effort field.

Patients still die, even if we do everything exactly right, but there are still a lot of professionals who couldn’t accept death as a universal outcome for the human condition.

But the COVID-19 Pandemic changed all of that. The inevitable undid all our systems, all our knowledge, and all our bravado. The pandemic left the healthcare field grieving.

Kübler-Ross stages of grief reveal that Denial is used to minimize a loss.[1] If we got comfort measures papers signed before a patient dies, then it was a choice to die. It’s not our fault. We still have control. But comfort measures were not even a consideration during the pandemic.

Then our beloved healthcare industry responded to the loss of control with Anger: It must be someone else’s fault that so many died. The system used to work.

As desperation crept in, Bargaining became a theme across the clinical world: We’ll right these wrongs if we can just get control again! But healthcare is not a social experiment and our efforts to affect human behavior are about as useful as our efforts to create immortality.

That’s when Depression set in. We realized how little control we really have, and feelings of helplessness led to burnout, loss, and regret. But that’s okay. Everyone goes through this. We don’t get to skip this stage, because we have to acknowledge the loss, or we have nowhere to go next.

What is the path forward? It’s called Acceptance. We never controlled who lived or died or when. Until we acknowledge that death is as much a part of our experience as healing, we cannot move forward. But if we see that reality clearly, then we can plan and deliver quality healthcare for real people, knowing that there is danger and the threat of death at every step.

But Patient Safety acknowledges that human life is fragile.

Our patient’s lives are precious. When we become arrogant and think there cannot be consequences for our human fallibility, that is when we are most vulnerable.

We must accept that we are human and fallible: We don’t control death, and we don’t get to give life. But we can do our best to care, verify, and protect patients from harm as we try to help. That is the path forward in healthcare, and even a Pandemic cannot stop it.

[1] Clarke, J. (Dec. 7, 2023). How the Fiv Stages of Grief Can Help Process a Loss. VeryWell Mind. https://www.verywellmind.com/five-stages-of-grief-4175361.