The 34-year-old man lay in his ICU bed for over a month — dependent on a breathing tube and artificial respirator to stay alive. The patient knew his life hung in the balance, as he was a physician himself. Some days the suffering was so intense that he contemplated ways he could unplug the machine on his own.
Now, nearly 50 years later, that patient, Edward Viner, an oncologist who served as chief of the Department of Medicine at Cooper University Health Care in New Jersey for more than two decades, reflects on how he was able to survive such a harrowing experience.
It was the nurses he calls his "angels." But it was not all of his nurses. When it was time for shift change in the ICU, Viner says he felt that he could detect almost immediately if the nurse coming on duty truly cared. He could tell some nurses cared deeply, but some did not.
"When my nurses cared," he distinctly remembers, "I knew that shift would be a positive experience and that their compassion would help me fight on and help save me."
With all of Viner's knowledge from a lifetime of treating patients, does he really believe that his nurses' compassion changed his outcome? Is there data to back up the claim that caring can make a difference and that health-care outcomes are not just dependent on how much health-care providers know, but rather how much they care? We do not raise this consideration on ethical or emotional grounds, but rather on the basis of medical science.
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https://www.washingtonpost.com/national/health-science/for-patients-a-caregivers-compassion-is-essential/2019/05/10/6aa513ce-6b58-11e9-8f44-e8d8bb1df986_story.html?
