Health News - ‘I am privileged to work with people who are at the end of their lives’

Published: 16 April, 2010
by JOSH LOEB

IT happens to us all eventually but we try not to think about it too much. It is “more taboo than sex”, its mention capable of silencing chatty party guests.
Death is frightening to comprehend, but that should not stop us talking about it. So says Liz Thomas, who as lead nurse in the Royal Free Hospital’s palliative care team has dealt with death on a daily basis for the past 22 years.
The specialist team of nurses provide free care to people in the advanced stages of terminal illness. They recently took part in Dying Awareness Week to “raise the profile” of death and dying and encourage people to talk about what they want for their end-of-life care.
Liz says: “When I go to a party and people ask me what I do and I tell them, the conversation goes cold. They assume it must be a terrible job, but I I feel privileged to be working with people at the end of their lives because they share very intimate thoughts and feelings.”
Liz says doctors are better at talking about dying than they used to be, but adds: “As a wider society we still have a great fear around it. It’s a bit taboo. It’s certainly a bigger taboo than sex nowadays.”
The palliative care team was set up in 1982 and has grown dramatically in size since. The nurses care for patients with advanced cancer and other diseases, either at home or in hospital. The term ‘palliative’, which comes from the Latin for “to cloak or cover”, involves an approach to treatment that focuses on easing the days before death.
This can involve anything from administering pain-relieving drugs to having conversations about a person’s past, family or religious feelings to help them deal with what they are experiencing. “It’s a very holistic approach,” says Liz.
People are often scared that death will be painful or worried about how family members will cope.
“Some will talk about how sad they are to be leaving people behind,” explains Liz. “Some feel they are going to meet family members again after they die. Others have very few spiritual feelings.
“I had a bizarre situation the other day when I went to see a bereaved family. The patient’s husband had died several years previously. She had a parrot and the parrot didn’t talk much, but towards the end of the woman’s life (she died at home) the parrot started talking in her husband’s voice – according to the family. And after she died, the parrot started talking in her voice. I think the family saw that as a comfort rather than as something spooky.”
It must surely also be a comfort to patients and their families to know that Liz finds her job so rewarding.
“I feel privileged to be allowed into someone’s life at such a sensitive time,” she says. “I wouldn’t do anything else.”