Protection

Over the course of this year, we have been exposed to the depressing and sometimes unfair reality of the hospital system. Personally I have experienced two patients who have died overnight and a number more with terminal illnesses. If I have encountered this number of morbid situations in my relatively short time working in hospitals, I give full respect to those that have worked for much longer than me. Especially the professions that are exposed to death and dying on a much greater scale than a physiotherapy student can imagine.

At the beginning of the year I was shocked at the amount of humour that was related to death, dying, injury and the general disease process and its effects. I could appreciate the humour from a comical standpoint but was nonetheless disturbed by the prevalence of it. And it wasn't young, uneducated laymen who were making these jokes, it was educated, experienced, professional medical, nursing and allied health staff that had the largest comedic repertoire.

It bought up a memory from high school where a good friend of mine was telling me about his older brother who had recently graduated from medicine. My friend and the rest of his family had intensely strong christian beliefs and values and the older brother especially was a role model in his faith. So I was shocked to be told about how only a year into his medical profession he was having major doubts about his faith and the place it had in situations he was seeing in his career. Fortunately these doubts were dispelled and this doctor was able to use his religion to protect himself from the deeply affective nature that a working in a hospital has on you.

For those of us who do not share similar beliefs or embrace religion, humour seems to be the most effective way to protect ourselves from the emotionally jarring circumstances that we encounter in hospitals. This isn't humour that insults, patronizes or belittles a patient but humour that allows us to sometimes detach ourselves from terminally ill patients that we have undoubtedly formed an emotional connection with. Some strategy of coping, whether it is humour, physical activity or an ideal home environment is essential in our line of work.