LETTING THE EXPERTS DECIDE? (PRACTITIONER’S POWER)

Some practitioners are simply unable to tell their patients that control of their cancer is beyond the practitioner’s power. To advise not having, or stopping, anti-cancer treatment would be to admit that this is so. Thus these practitioners keep on recommending highly potent and unpleasant treatments when they are either known to be extremely unlikely to do any good or are experimental. Or course, these practitioners justify their actions to themselves, their colleagues and the patient’s relatives. When questioned they say: ‘I can’t tell that patient that I can do nothing because that would be cruel — it would take all hope away.’ This sort of statement actually confirms my claim that these practitioners are solely concerned with fighting cancer, not with treating whole people. When there is no effective anti-cancer treatment available, they say they can do nothing. When there is no hope of curing the cancer they say that stopping treatment would take all hope away. Practitioners who care for whole people would never think or say that they can do nothing. They know that treating symptoms, giving time, care, reassurance and a sympathetic ear are all doing something! Practitioners who care for whole people know that cure of their cancer is not the only thing that patients hope for. They recognise and try to fulfill other hopes—hopes for relief of pain, for time to spend at home with family and loved ones, for realistic information that will allow time for goodbyes and grieving.