Compassion Fatigue

Reading daily safety incident reports leaves the president of St. Joseph’s Healthcare in Hamilton extremely concerned for the safety of healthcare workers.

‘A doctor is always a doctor, no matter where they go,’ a friend said to Dr. Jabir Jassam but sometimes he’d like to just be Jabir.

Dr. Hector Baillie writes how nowadays, the role of the doctor has become further removed from one-on-one compassionate care.

As part of the duties of being a pharmacist, our job involves helping people when they are not at their best. Empathetically recognizing that they carry burdens with their visits to see us is the first step to being the helper (as bystander) instead of a combatant fighting against them. They do not necessarily mean to fight us, but we are just sometimes in their way. It is our job to recognize that and manage it.

A four-month suspension was handed down to Dr. Robert Steffen of Melfort by the Council of the College of Physicians and Surgeons of Saskatchewan on Nov. 28.

The program is comprised of 25 physicians from various specialties, who can be reached for emotional support or guidance, where appropriate.

It’s estimated that more than one in three people with MS have trouble swallowing, according to a meta-analysis published in Neurological Sciences.

We are unique. Pharmacists are their own kind, and we lack a band of unity where we can vent, share ideas and correct each other when going off-path. The result is a feeling of being somewhat isolated. Since we cannot exactly place our identities within the groups of people around us, we can feel different and often lack a suitable like-minded partner to support us as we navigate and process the day.