Bring death out of the closet: palliative care doctor

COQUITLAM—It’s not healthy to hide illness and death from the public eye, according to Providence Health Care palliative care expert Romayne Gallagher.

“Society needs to take back sickness, death, and dying as part of who we are,” she told about 100 health care professionals and guests at the 77th annual general meeting of the Catholic Health Association of B.C. Sept. 14.

“It is the equal responsibility of the community and the health care system to care for people when they get sick.”

Gallagher argued that hospitals, cities, businesses, and organizations must do their part to take illness out of the closet and bring it into the light, with efforts such as improved palliative care and support for employees who care for ill family members.

“We need to take back the sick and the dying as part of our community.”

Zeroing in on the health care system, she said much more can be done to expand palliative care and make sure very sick patients are having their needs met.

“Ask: what do I need to know about you to take the best care of you? It might be something simple, such as “don’t call me ‘dear,’” she told CHABC members, including health professionals, in the room.

“Say to people: are you getting the care you think you should be? Is this what you were expecting?”

Society needs to take back sickness, death, and dying as part of who we are.

One patient had spent several days in the hospital and underwent six tests and multiple scans before someone asked him what kind of treatment he wanted. “He said: I was hoping for some food and a safe place to live because I can’t take care of myself anymore,” Gallagher recounted.

“What he wanted was hospice care,” not a lengthy, complicated hospital stay.

Gallagher also advocates for professional interpreters for patients who can’t speak English, and says hospitals should only offer CPR to patients who consent to it.

“Once people understand where they are at with their illness, they generally don’t ask for futile treatment,” she said. Gallagher has also known patients who have changed their minds about a request for an assisted suicide when presented with an alternative. “Once we got to talk to the patient, they said: ‘I can have palliative care? Never mind, I’ll take that.’”

What’s needed is a “de-mythifying” of sickness and death, said Gallagher. Improving how doctors and nurses listen to and treat their patients, expanding the number of hospice beds, and spreading awareness about palliative care can help do that.

“Ultimately, acute care would be not the default for the system, it would be the last resort for patients with chronic illness.”

She hopes the government will put effort into expanding access to quality palliative care.

Her presentation was part of a one-day conference on palliative care, seniors’ housing, and compassion. Other speakers included Providence Health Care’s Jo-Ann Tait and David Thompson as well as Anthropologist Margaret Critchlow and University of Calgary professor Shane Sinclair.

“Occasionally, we forget the importance of being with, suffering with, those who are sick, because we are in such a rush; caught up as we are in the frenzy of doing,” said Archbishop J. Michael Miller, CSB, who celebrated Mass at the start of the conference.

“Instead, following the Lord’s teaching and example, we need to ask for the grace of greater compassion toward those who are suffering in body and spirit. Compassion is the very soul of any vocation in the field of health care.”

Members of the Catholic Health Association of B.C. also renewed their commitments to faith and to health care at the conference. They also welcomed Father Andrii Chornenkyi of the Exhaltation of the Holy Cross Church in Surrey as the new priest on the board.