Caring for Caregivers
Surgeons, as well as other caregivers, work day and night near the scalpel-edge of life and death. When a patient dies, feelings of anger and guilt may descend on these caregivers. How can we help healers heal when their hearts have been broken? The temptation for many is to try and "fix" the grief and anger. Yet healing requires that we first be present to the caregiver’s pain.
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A Surgeon’s Anger*
The mouth of the garage swallows me…
& I remember I don’t remember the drive home from the hospital along a path I’ve beaten senseless in twenty years of travel.
Shards of anger penetrate, aggravate, prickle the way fiberglass tortures skin if touched bare-handed.
I must hide in the garage, let time transform me to the husband/father who loves wife/children sitting innocent in the home I bought for their comfort/mine & I’m bleeding-breathing/crying anger-knotted – as if the embolus that killed my patient stole my breath as well.
I bleed for the family behind me that I couldn’t comfort, for the crying friend I hurried by pretending to rush to another surgery (my face masked like a thief.) But I had no more cases and I know my last patient no longer needs me. Dead men need no doctors & I boil with grief, bereft at how this man I cared for left this world.
The indifferent garage hears the heated engine tick-snap. Tears cool slow as rain. I repeat: “My patient no longer needs me. My patient no longer needs me. My patient no longer has any needs…”
I let go of the steering wheel. To let. To let go & oh…Why pour my anger others? I reason, as I feel another scar form on my soul’s skin.
Inside, wife wants husband, children need father. Inside, I need the patience God has. Inside, I need the God my patient has.
*Note: I imagined this prose poem based on thirty years of listening to physicians and other caregivers share the pain, anger and grief they feel when a patient they thought would survive, suddenly dies.
Doctors, nurses – anyone close to saving life, know the risks involved in their work. Meditations, to be meaningful, need to recognize the brutal edges of life as well as her soft curves and sunny meadows. When their hearts are open, caregivers may feel not only heartache but, often, a sense of guilt after the death of a patient. These painful feelings may cause hearts to close and the delicate balance of compassion and competence to be lost.
The Baptist Healing Trust, under the guidance of Keith Hagan, M.D. and with the help of Drs. Roy Elam, Cheryl Fassler, and Liz Krueger, have formed an initiative called Caring for the Caregiver. In this work, physicians meet to share the experience of their practice in the hope that this sharing will, in and of itself, bring balance and healing. Their work rests in part on the wise teaching of Rachel Remen, M.D. For more information, contact us.
Journal of Sacred Work 
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