By Dr Stephen Connor | Executive Director
Our support for front line health professionals in Ukraine continues. So far we've reached over 1000 professionals from over 300 health care institutions in Ukraine. Most recently we had a case conference on a 54 year old patient dying from breast cancer whose son died fighting while she was hospitalized. During the case discussion two of the facilities were disrupted by alarms due to incoming missles. The case revolved mostly around the fact that the family did not want the patient to know her son had died during fighting as they felt it was too upsetting. The complexities of this quandry are the patient's right to know and to be able to say goodbye and grieve. Giving bad news is one of the stills we teach in palliative care since it's very common and requires some art and skill in communication. We believe patients have the right to decide what they want to know or not know and families that ask health professionals to withhold information, especially about diagnosis and prognosis can have unintended negative consequences. The patient died without ever knowing what happened to her son and why she didn't hear from him.
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