Ghosts: The Importance of Remembering Patients

In his regular column in Oncology Times, Cleveland Clinic Cancer Center Chair Brian Bolwell, MD, FACP, explores topics critical to leading cancer centers in today’s healthcare environment. This time, he gets personal:

“I think those of us who chose oncology did so with open eyes. We knew that a lot of our patients would die of cancer. And we are ok with that. We can help them throughout their journey. We see many people who are at their best when things are at their worst. We are also in a field that is highly intellectual with a rapidly expanding knowledge base—no other field of medicine is exploding with new discoveries and new treatments to the extent cancer medicine is. The ability to offer new therapies based on immunology or genomics is energizing. But year after year of getting calls in the middle of the day that one of our patients has died—with other patients waiting, or other issues that need to be addressed, and no time to adequately process the news—takes its toll. And I wonder if that toll is cumulative.”

Read the full column here.

Photo Credit: ©Russell Lee