Our Patients, Our Families, Ourselves: The Impact of the Professional's Emotional Responses on End-of-life Care

As professionals working in end-of-life care, awareness of our emotional responses to the people with whom we work is critical for good diagnosis, treatment, and service delivery. Understanding the personal and professional connections between our own losses, life experiences, and intimacy needs is essential in this work. If we fail to recognize our personal feelings about mortality, suffering, and powerlessness that are evoked in the clinical situation, and if we allow ourselves to be “hooked” by situations and dynamics that push our buttons, we may find our patient care compromised. Five common issues arising for the professional working in end-of-life care are delineated and illuminated by case examples in this article: unresolved griefwork, threats to professional omnipotence and to professional omniscience, overidentification, and intimacy needs. The authors present a framework that professionals can use to begin to discern the potential convergence of personal and professional issues and their impact on end-of-life care.