Emotional Baggage

Emotional Baggage.

This reflective piece works to highlight not only the patients’ side to each story, but also pushes you to consider the emotions felt by medical professionals. In a video conversation with Dr Easton, we discussed emotional baggage (which is represented by my reflective piece). The key themes of this conversation were an overwhelming sense of responsibility, the reasons for this were not ones I had thought of, in primary care fields, the patient is there exclusively to see you, and unlike secondary care, another opinion from a different professional is rare, which can leave you second guessing yourself. Also, as mentioned in Dr Salisbury’s BMJ article, the importance of coffee, it can be very difficult to cope without taking time out of your day to ask for help from your colleagues, vent your stresses and just take a minute to breathe.

My reflection was furthered through my studies, where we covered both elderly and palliative care as part of our primary care module. Prior to the course my knowledge regarding elderly care was limited. I had built quite an extensive relationship with the ideas surrounding assisted living, due to family who lived in St George’s Park, an assisted living retirement village with differing levels of intervention dependent completely on specific residents’ desires.

Having only ever experienced this side of the scale, our in-course studies were specifically eye-opening for me, helping to illuminate some of the pitfalls in primary care that I was previously unaware of. A study by Bangerter et al showed that there is a lack of autonomy and perceived choice in a large proportion of care homes and as a result, the residents within these homes often show a reduced satisfaction in both the care they receive and their perceived quality of life (QOL). This really underlined for me the point that medicine should transcend beyond simply trying to extend somebodies life, and that quality of life is often more important than quantity, to put this concisely, you need to live, not just be alive.

Palliative care is the last topic I touched upon within my reflective piece. It also provoked thinking about what might be considered more important, the quality or quantity of life. Research clearly shows its benefits, leading to net savings for palliative care patients who passed away, less aggressive treatment choices and a longer life with an increased (QOL) score. However, I’ve seen first-hand as to why it’s such a contentious topic (with it commonly being mistook for hospice care), it could be seen as resigning yourself to defeat. This misunderstanding has massive implications as it may push individuals to deny quality of life altering care at fear of having to stop current treatments, when in fact, it’s used alongside treatments to help you manage your symptoms and enhance your overall QOL.

In writing this reflection, I feel that I have experienced emotional, reflective and academic growth, and I hope to continue this development moving forward.

Bibliography

Bangerter, L.R., Heid, A.R., Abbott, K., and Van Haitsma, K. (2017) ‘Honoring the Everyday Preferences of Nursing Home Residents: Perceived Choice and Satisfaction With Care’, The Gerontologist, Vol. 57(3), pp. 479-486. [Online] Available at: https://academic.oup.com/gerontologist/article/57/3/479/2631926 (Accessed: 16 Nov. 2020)

Salisbury, H. (2019) ‘The importance of coffee’, The BMJ, Vol. 366. [Online] Available at: https://www.bmj.com/content/366/bmj.l5519 (Accessed: 2 Nov. 2020)