ArticleBMJ supportive & palliative care2014
The lived experience of physicians dealing with patient death.
Article in BMJ supportive & palliative care, 2014. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 15 papers.
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The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
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Who cites it
15 citing papers in PubMed, 59 citations in OpenAlex.
- Emotional Impact of Patient Death and Associated Psychological Distress in Cardiac Physicians.JACC. Advances · 2026Article
- When stories become care: mapping literary exposure to empathy and resilience in medical students and doctors through the lens of narrative medicine.Frontiers in medicine · 2026Article
- The current state of defensive medicine and its association with empathy: a cross-sectional study among graduate students in Guangxi, China.BMC medical education · 2025Article
- 'You Also Have to Let People Go'-Effects of Formative Experiences with Dying and Death on Medical Trainees' Attitudes.Medical science educator · 2024Article
- Navigating Grief in the Realm of Patient Mortality: Insights from Trainee Doctors from a Tertiary Medical Hospital in India- A Qualitative Study.Indian journal of psychological medicine · 2024Article
- How Primary Care Clinicians Process Patient Death: Logistics, Emotions, and Opportunities for Structural Support.Journal of general internal medicine · 2024Article
- Dealing with Death/dying in Medicine.Oman medical journal · 2024Article
- Strengthening the military stoic tradition: enhancing resilience in military service members and public safety personnel through functional disconnection and reconnection.Frontiers in psychology · 2024Article
- Investigating the Relationship between Fear of Failure and the Delivery of End-of-Life Care: A Questionnaire Study.Nursing reports (Pavia, Italy) · 2023Article
- Functional disconnection and reconnection: an alternative strategy to stoicism in public safety personnel.European journal of psychotraumatology · 2021Article
- The lived experience of medical training and emotional intelligence.Proceedings (Baylor University. Medical Center) · 2021Article
- Evaluation of Before Operational Stress: A Program to Support Mental Health and Proactive Psychological Protection in Public Safety Personnel.Frontiers in psychology · 2021Article
- Professional identity at stake: a phenomenological analysis of spiritual counselors' experiences working with a structured model to provide care to palliative cancer patients.Supportive care in cancer : official journal of the Multinational Association of Supportive Care in Cancer · 2016Article
- Relationships between personal attitudes about death and communication with terminally ill patients: How oncology clinicians grapple with mortality.Patient education and counseling · 2016Article
- Grief and Coping Education in US Preclinical Medical Curricula: Findings from an Exploratory Survey.Journal of medical education and curricular developmentArticle
Corrections and comments
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Authors and funding
1 author at 1 institution in 1 country.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
backgroundA growing body of research indicates that physicians suffer high levels of stress, depression and burnout. Related literature has found that physician stress can negatively impact patient care. This study builds upon previous research that found some dying patients experienced 'iatrogenic suffering' caused by the way physicians communicated with them regarding terminal diagnoses and palliative treatment. The goal of this research was to explore physicians' experiences of dealing with patient death in order to understand how such experiences affect them and their communication with patients.
methodsThis study used qualitative methods to conduct and analyse 10 individual, semistructured interviews with senior physicians from several specialty areas at a large, tertiary care hospital. The resulting themes were validated using member checks and expert review.
resultsThis article presents five essential themes that provide a concise description of the lived experience of patient death for these physicians.
interpretationThese themes indicate that physicians can experience very strong and lasting emotional reactions to some patient deaths, and also that patient death can elicit intense experiences related to professional responsibility and competence. A key finding is the description of a complex process of managing the balance between personal and professional reactions in the face of patient death. The implication is that difficulties negotiating this balance may lead to unintended lapses in compassion and suboptimal outcomes in patient care.
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Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.