“Our centre of gravity is the patient as a person. Who are they? Or are they simply Bed 10?”
These urgent existential, ethical and — of course — medical questions, cutting to the heart of what compassionate healthcare and a humane approach to death might look like in our time, were raised and answered by senior clinician, researcher and academic Dr Theodoros Kyprianou at an event organised by the Cyprus National Bioethics Committee at the University of Nicosia in November 2017.
I referenced that important address in yesterday’s column. Today I want to add another passage from his speech — one that stands as a guiding light for truly holistic medical practice. Dr Kyprianou, who at the time was head of the Intensive Care Unit at Nicosia General Hospital and today practises pulmonology and intensive care in the private sector, said the following:
“In intensive care, we see things from the inside — where a battle is being fought to save the patient’s life. But outside the ICU, another battle is being waged, one every bit as important as the one inside, and people need access to information and to the language we use.
We need to ask ourselves about our patient’s values, their character, their beliefs — and, of course, their medical condition. In many units today, it is recommended that family photographs be placed beside the patient, to remind everyone that the person lying naked and defenceless beneath the monitors had, only days before, a family, dignity, values and convictions. Palliative care for that patient must affirm life and treat death as a natural process. It aims neither to hasten death nor to postpone it. Medicine is not there to delay the dying process.
What must concern us is that the management of death in our time has slipped away from the human being — and what is needed is a rehumanisation of death, in the way we as a society, as hospitals, and as healthcare professionals provide our services. The psychological support offered in our own ICU is a model in which the psychologist is part of the multidisciplinary team, is briefed daily on the progress of patients, makes interventions, and is constantly out with the families.”
Dr Kyprianou closed with a line from Mahatma Gandhi: that “to find yourself, you must lose yourself in the service of others” — which he described as “the motto of all healthcare professionals, always.”
