Patients with heart failure (HF) who we take care of over many years don't exactly
become "friends," but mutual bonds do form that transcend the strict doctor/patient
relationship. They become more than simply "patients." We get to know family members,
likes and dislikes, anecdotes from their lives, sometimes political stances, and more.
And although they generally know a lot less about us than we do about them, they still
often find out about major life events like births of kids and grandkids, marriages,
and more, as well as random facts we might share. So when their HF takes a turn for
the worse, it is very different than when we meet a patient for the first time who
may be in dire straits or even dying, when it is somehow more purely clinical, and
we as clinicians are a bit more detached. In patients we have know a long time, subtle
differences also become easier to detect, including when things seem to be starting
to go downhill and approaching later stages of disease. We may see it coming before
saying anything to them, trying to gauge how to best time it so that things like end-of-life
discussions occur at just the right time: not too early, not too late, sort of like
Goldilocks.
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Article info
Publication history
Published online: June 17, 2021
Accepted:
June 2,
2021
Received:
June 1,
2021
Identification
Copyright
© 2021 Published by Elsevier Inc.
