Why is it that the more existential aspects of health care haven’t received as much play?
Traditionally, if you go back far enough, healing was the basis of medicine. I think the advent of science and with it, technology, has so preoccupied us that we’ve come to identify medicine solely with curing or fixing. Why is that? [The curative aspect] appeals to us because it looks like we’re progressing rapidly and solving problems – which we are doing to a considerable extent. It also appeals to us because it allows us to avoid our own fears and anxieties. The truth is that we don’t solve all problems. It’s much easier to run away from that than to face our own anxiety about our own vulnerability. And one of the things we strongly feel in WPC is that one of the biggest obstacles is dealing with death anxiety. This is not just in patients. This is in doctors and nurses. The whole health care system, in a way, tends to shy away from its own death anxiety. That was the main purpose of the initiation of palliative care. Cicely Saunders [English nurse/social worker/physician, best kno
