A short reflective dialogue about caring for patients at the end of life who hold strong religious convictions about the afterlife. Speakers explore how clinicians can be authentically supportive without imposing their own beliefs, emphasizing humble responses, preserving patients’ dignity, and accepting uncertainty about death.
There is a point where I come into the room and if I'm lucky, sometimes I'm lucky, sometimes I'm not, but I don't know. And I am receptive and I met with somebody with a. That I know they're my client, they're my patient. I know them. And they do have a strong religious belief. They do believe I am going to heaven or whatever it may be for them. And I don't know. And they do know. They believe they know. And I want to support them. At the same time, I want to be authentic in a way that's supportive. But how do we deal with that nuance, their choice?
We don't want to support our own authenticity unless it's serving them. And so if they ask us and say, basically, I can't wait, I'm really looking forward to seeing my relatives and my friends and this and that, we're responding with, that's fantastic to have that kind of faith. You know, I mean, it's wonderful. It's like it's really just such a gift to have that kind of faith. And then if they ask us what about you? Which is probably pretty unlikely, then we probably would give some degree of a humble answer. But we probably at the same time wouldn't want to reinforce any serious doubts. There's no upside. So we would probably give a very understated version of where we are and say in some implicit suggestion that I'm not sure I would want to trade my belief for yours because it sounds like you already have a clear vision. So we need to be comfortable with being in a subordinate role when we have a sense that it's not really going to support their well being and their transition. And you know what? They might know. Our not knowing really supports the idea that their knowing might be right. So we're at peace with that realization. That's a very important point.
Tell me more about that point. It is such an interesting point to me because if I'm really not knowing, then that means I have to accept they may know it's better than that.
Not only I have to accept, I automatically accept. If we're in the real not knowing, we're marveling at someone having deep faith and conviction because we're coming in like an innocent child and they're saying this is my reality and it's a beautiful reality and they're telling us the colors of the house and we're marveling at that because we don't want to do anything that's going to make it more difficult for them in their transition. And we truly recognize that. That we can't be right for sure. Meaning that when we don't know, it means we're not right. Because the end of life and death is going to be something. And in our state of not knowing, either there's going to be reincarnation or there's going to be going to heaven, or there's going to be dust, or there's going to be some unknown thing that we can't even conceive of, but we don't know, which means we want to bless everything as long as it's supporting some form of dignity in the eyes of the person that is dying. And that's what the beauty is.
