Health professionals big part of transition from life to death
Death is not an easy topic for discussion, let alone address in a meaningful way, but it is nonetheless something we all must face one day. And more often than not, says Darrin Parkin of Hospice Calgary, the ones who will help us oversee that transition from life to death will be health-care professionals in a hospital, home-care or hospice environment.
“Death is a natural part of life, and what people are asking is what can we do to help the family go through this transition and provide support,” said Parkin. “We are providing holistic care. A physician is part of the spokes of that wheel, and they understand we (who work in palliative care) all are. Based on our understanding of current and recent research, we know those who are spiritual and religious, accessing those things for them is part of well-being. And palliative care is helping wellbeing to be present even in the midst of dying.”
Parkin spoke to a packed house of mostly medical professionals Tuesday at the County Room of Chinook Regional Hospital. Parkin, who is the former prison chaplain at the Lethbridge Correctional Centre, was contracted alongside fellow presenter Blair Collins to come to Lethbridge by the Alberta Hospice and Palliative Care Association to address the spiritual aspect of dying, and to help local medical professionals address their own spiritual needs as they help those with terminal illness in the final stages of their lives.
“We want to give a working model caregivers can actually use when they see a patient does have spiritual distress and existential angst about their coming death,” Parkin said. “We’re recognizing as a society we have been fairly death-denying in our culture. We hide it, we clean it up, we put makeup on it because we are not comfortable with death. In our ancestral background we didn’t hide from death, but we have become sanitized from it. But I do think that is changing, and what you see is a lot of people becoming interested in all aspects of the death and dying experience.”
In the afternoon part of the session Parkin’s co-presenter Collins spoke about the importance of using personal or religious ritual to help those who are dying find ways to accept their passing. He also led attendees in a special floating candle ritual he designed to help them understand their own emotional experience of a patient’s death, and to find ways to heal their own emotional wounds from going through such experiences.
“I think we are hungry for rituals,” Collins stated. “Professionals aren’t immune to feeling grief and pain as they witness other people going through pain. These people need to let go of the grief they carry as well. I am a big promoter of the idea you need to have regular cry sessions if you are in this (health-care) business.”