Hospital’s special kind of caring when life is short
Print Edition
THE palliative care center at Jiading Yingyuan Hospital, which has 15 medical staff with an average age of 27, provides treatment and care for terminally ill patients. The center has accepted 232 patients since 2012 with the caring staff endeavoring to improve the patients’ quality of life.
“The palliative treatment can comfort these painful patients and release their mental stress,” said Jin Jingxian, doctor at the center.
Yingyuan is the first hospital to open a palliative care center in Jiading District. Becoming a palliative care doctor requires a special work license and relevant experience.
Jin and Zhou Wei are the first batch of doctors to receive palliative care training in Shanghai.
Unlike other medical departments, patients who accept palliative treatment are no searching for a cure. The only thing that palliative care doctors can do is to make them comfortable throughout their final days.
“We try to talk more with the patients, coaxing a smile from them. Most of the patients clearly realize their condition but some of them will still ask me about a cure. Instead of giving them a direct answer, I will ask what their expectations are,” said Jin.
Sometimes, patients die just a few days after they become familiar with the medical staff.
Great mental pressure
“Our duty is to make them feel relaxed regardless the fact that they are about to leave the world,” Jin said.
These palliative care doctors are under great mental pressure because they can hardly obtain a sense of achievement with their work, but they still try to make a difference.
The relationship between doctors and patients’ families is not harmonious all the time.
“Some patients’ relatives oppose to use the morphine because they think morphine can cause patients to become addicted to it. Actually, we will use a combinations of medicines to reduce the side affects of morphine. When they see the change of patients’ condition after using morphine, they start to accept this treatment,” Jin said.
Although many people regard the palliative care center as a tomb for patients, miracles could happen occasionally.
Li, a 64-year-old patient, was paralyzed due to the metastasis of his cancer. Doctors told him that he had about six months to live.
In 2015, he came to the Yingyuan care center. During treatment, his lower limbs were moved regularly to preserve the muscles. Several months later, Li had recovered to such an extent that he was able to look after himself and was discharged.
Today, Li is a volunteer at the center, bringing hope to other terminally ill patients.
Xu Henan, 34, is a social worker at Yingyuan Hospital.
“Different from the doctors, when I go around the wards, my work is to ask the needs of the patients and solve it,” said Xu.
He recalls a patient called He who came to the hospital last year after he was diagnosed with oral cancer. For the first few days, he refused to eat and often wandered around the wards in the middle of the night.
His unusual behavior was a worry to Xu. She frequently took food and water to He’s ward and kept talking to him even though he couldn’t reply. Xu never gave up trying to communicate with him and one day He started to take food.
“You could feel that he lacked mental support. What I should do is to care for him like a friend,” said Xu.
Added as a WeChat friend
He’s problem was that he could hardly speak due to his cancer. So Xu added him as a friend on WeChat and then they were able to communicate with each other.
Often, He would send a message to Xu to call his mom who was living in the senior nursing home. Xu would bring gifts for He to encourage him to enjoy life.
Sadly, He passed away several months later.
In order to relieve the emotional distress when patients die, the social work department will organize a meeting for doctors and nurses so they can share their feelings.
Chen Ye, the charge nurse at the center, practices her smile in front of the mirror at the start of every day.
“You look better than yesterday. Let’s take a picture and send it to your daughter,” Chen said to a patient surnamed Miao, who has a malignant tumor and was estimated to live about 20 days.
Among the nurses’ duties in the care center is dispensing medicine, recording patients’ conditions, keeping them calm and relieving their mental stress.
“If you ask me what’s the difference from other nurses, my answer is we own a stronger heart,” said Chen.
“The wounds of the patients can fester because of the growth of cancer cells. It is not only technical work to clean these wounds, but also a task to test the capacity for toleration. Usually, the morning shift nurses won’t take breakfast before changing the medicine because it may make them feel sick when they see the wounds. But finally they will get used to it,” said Chen.
Chen and her team treat their patients as they would like to be treated.
In 2012, the hospital accepted a patient with advanced esophageal cancer. Nurse Xu Yuan took charge of him.
One time, when the patient was coughing up sputum Xu wasn’t able to get a cup in time but held it in her hands.
However, she never complained. Another patient surnamed Shen had festering wounds which were turning black.
Nurse Shen Tingting, though pregnant, insisted on changing the dressings herself. She said, “I know more about her than other nurses. It is my responsibility to take care of her.”
“We try to say positive words to encourage these patients, such as ‘You look much better than yesterday’ or ‘You should believe yourself,’ instead of ‘get well soon.’
“When the patient is reluctant to take medicine or talk to us, the nurse will sit beside the patient to comfort him,” Chen said. “We don’t need complements from patients but satisfaction. It is a great relief that the patients or their relatives say ‘thank you’ to us.”
(Translated by Yu Hong)
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