The interviewed Hanna Sanoff, MD, MPH, about grief, an “inescapable” part of the job for oncologists, and she explained how mourning “the lost of the human connection helps her help others grieve.”
Sanoff also said she has “learned from patients how to deliver bad news in person and share in their grief ‘without losing'” herself, but finds herself “wholly unprepared to speak of death and dying across cell phones or video links with unreliable connections.”
Sanoff wrote an essay detailing some of her recent patient encounters, which has been published in the JAMA Oncology.
“I have not yet figured out how to help guide patients’ struggles’ with cancer, leading them toward a death with dignity and finding personal reward in our relationship, when I cannot see them (or) hug them,” she said.
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