Encountering death is an integral part of Medicine. Patients die on you. This is even more so for me as I work with geriatric patients. And I work with people who often want to die, and attempt or commit suicide.

 

The death of a patient hits me. Every time. I wonder if this will ever cease – or should it cease?  The population base I treat usually has few resources or family. When they die, I often hear about it when the county calls to tell me so-and-so was found dead and he’s in the morgue waiting autopsy for cause of death.

 

I think I speak for many doctors when I say many emotional reactions occur upon learning of a death:

 

One emotion is ‘failure’. Somehow we could have/should have seen this coming or done something differently to avoid it. This emotion is aggravated by society which tends to believe all death = failure, and death = somebody is at fault.

 

One emotion is frustration. The specific cause of death is often not known or probably from multiple factors. Everyone wants to know ‘why did he die?” meaning what one thing caused it. It seldom works that way and we seldom find out.

 

One emotion is sadness. I see so many depressed and frustrated people with suicidal ideation and hopelessness. When someone is found dead, I ruminate did they commit suicide? I see suicide as a tragic loss.

 

I have to continually remind myself death happens; it is the inevitable conclusion of the accumulation of multiple factors for which no one has full mastery.

Even when someone commits suicide, a suicide is an act ultimately unstoppable when someone decides to do so. We try hard to thwart it/see the risks but I can not stop anyone if they so resolute to end their life.

 

All the same, a death or a suicide makes my job sorrowful.