Word: klagsbrun
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Dates: during 1969-1969
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...York Psychiatrist Samuel Klagsbrun, 36, believes that the atmosphere in a death ward can be made at least reasonably tolerable. He tested his thesis in a 21-year demonstration project at Yale New Haven Hospital in Connecticut, where he was consulting psychiatrist in a small cancer-research unit filled with terminal cases. When he arrived, he found the morale of both staff and patients abysmal. The doctors and nurses considered the patients "walking dead"; the patients grumbled constantly about "uncaring" doctors, "unavailable" nurses, and experimental drugs that they thought were being used on them as if they were guinea pigs...
...China Vase. Klagsbrun decided first to minister to the psychological needs of the unit as a whole rather than any individual. He did this by giving particularly careful attention to the nurses, since their influence on the patients was pervasive. In a series of group discussions, he was able to make the nurses believe that, despite their feelings of futility, they were performing a crucial if difficult duty. Most important of all, Klagsbrun encouraged the nurses to look upon the patients in a more realistic and candid way. Death, he insisted, should not be treated like a delicate china vase...
...happened, the spirit of open communication in the ward created a new problem: the patients started asking "Am I going to die?" Klagsbrun's recommendation: each patient should be handled in a straightforward manner, but one that he could most easily accept. Often the patient himself provided the clue as to how the question should be answered. When one told Klagsbrun, "Doc, I've never felt better," the psychiatrist knew that the man needed to delude himself about the true nature of his condition and could not cope with the truth. On the other hand, Klagsbrun felt that...
...Klagsbrun concedes that his upbeat approach, which has been adopted as a regular part of the hospital's procedures, does not satisfactorily deal with the agonizing time immediately before death. "This period," he says, "is still an unknown entity from the psychological point of view." Even so, he may have made some unexpected progress. With life rapidly slipping from her, an old Italian woman called to a nurse one day. "It is the end, isn't it?" she asked. The nurse nodded, sat next to the old woman and held her hand. "I don't want...