Emotions
Editor-in-Chief and Editorial Director, in a Laborcare Journal editorial, talk about managing emotions
By Gianluca Favero and Mariella Orsi
“Watch with me means much more than simply our learning skills, our attempt to learn about mental suffering and loneliness and to pass this knowledge on to others. (…) ‘Watch with me’ means, above all, simply ‘being there’ …”
From detachment as a defense mechanism so much advocated in the training of health care personnel in the 1970s-80s, we have moved on to understanding the value of the emotions aroused by care work.
This entails, of course, the need to know how to recognize and manage one’s own and others’ emotions during the different stages of illness and care given to frail people, deferring the need to specific supervision of the care team that becomes part of continuing education.
In addition to the most appropriate modalities for supervision, there is a need for appropriate space and time to be dedicated to ensure both privacy of the communications that take place on this occasion and time considered part of working hours that facilitate the participation of all service/department staff, subject to emergencies and on-call shifts.
The now obsolete adage “doing – knowing how to do, being – knowing how to be” must be enriched by “knowing how to be” because just as Margherita Biotti writes: “… empathy, being, are not personal, character qualities. They are real professional performances, they are performances of care.”
Too often-in the course of elective activities dedicated to the ethical, social and anthropological aspects of the end of life-students tell us “we are unprepared” by which they do not refer to the lack of knowledge of procedures but to the difficulty of sharing moments of life alongside the person who is suffering or who comes to the end of his or her life.
And it is precisely on the topic of “suffering” that Andrea Lopes Pegna draws our attention by offering, to the reader, reflections borrowed from years and years lived “in the field.”
How often are anaffective responses given to a person who suffers such as, for example, the hasty administration of a drug instead of devoting the right amount of time to “enter into the suffering,” understand whether this is the result of the discomfort given by the disease, the loss of dignity and, why not, the fear of leaving, of dying.
How much does the haste and, sometimes, the sterile application of procedures dispossess caregivers of the opportunity to “stand” beside those who suffer by taking care to safeguard the dignity that illness tends to undermine?
Harvey Max Chochinov, in his book “The Dignity Therapy,” writes, “…dignity and all that it implies – touches a chord that resonates very deeply with most health professionals …”
From the many contributions that make up this issue of the journal, the “naturalness” of the finitude of life shines through, even where it seems, according to common opinion, that nothing painful should happen.
More and more the role that Laborcare Journal is taking on is being defined among the various Authors-health professionals-who share this space: a place-laboratory where to experiment with the practice of telling and retelling.
It is up to the reader to use his or her own “toolbox” to be able to acquire, by reading the various articles, the different points of view and experiences in order to give a reading in both health and human sciences.
Too often the term “narrative medicine” has been emphasized to represent the perceptions of caregivers and caregivers, underestimating the value of sharing and reworking in the work group of thoughts and emotions that give an ethical perspective of care work.
It is important to highlight the common thread that unites the various contributions: feeling part of the lives of the people one cares for, not only with all one’s expertise but, also with the practice of “being here and now” with flexibility and attention to the other.
It is possible to view the full issue of the magazine at www.laborcare.it”
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