Julia is a palliative care doctor in South Africa and serves Umduduzi Hospice Care for Children. Julia began her career as a general practitioner and during her time as a junior doctor in the peak of the HIV/AIDS epidemic in South Africa, she realized that she was seeing more death than recovery. This period was transformative for her and from it she saw the invaluable difference that good palliative care made v for the patient and their family alike.
In this conversation we explore Julia's journey in palliative care, holistic patient centered approaches and the importance of listening - not just taking a history. Julia shares her experiences with different end of life belief systems, self-care habits for reflection and the value of friends that can challenge you.
Julia's biggest insight into palliative care: " Through palliative care its possible to give someone a good death, one that's less painful than it needs to be. We always say that we can't make things better for a terminally ill patient, but from experience a poor death, poorly managed and with poor communication, can definitely make things a lot worse."
The seeds that were planted in my garden from this conversation:
- The distinction between sympathy, empathy and compassion . Sympathy is when you feel sorry for someone, which doesn't help! It creates a power gradient where I am better than you, because you are worse than me. As a result you feel the need to do or fix something for someone else instead of just being there with them. Empathy is recognizing where someone else is at, "I can see what you are going through is very hard! I am not going to try and fix it, but i can walk next to you during this path." It's an empowering relationship. Compassion is then taking the recognition of someone's suffering and desiring to do something about it. So asking them, how do I support you? How do we facilitate something to make you more resilient or more able to cope?
- Sometimes good is good enough. Learning to accept that doing the best you can is all that's needed, even if its not perfect. The pursuit of perfection can be an incredibly disabling path, because as humans - imperfect beings - we are going to fall short sometimes. So be ok with doing your best, however that might turn out!
- Nobody makes it out of life alive. Not talking or thinking about death doesn't make it not happen. Conversely, talking or thinking about death doesn't make it happen any sooner. All we can really do is to live a purposeful life and hope that when we are at the end, we are surrounded by the people we love and comforted by palliative care professionals.
Links:
Umduduzi
The r100 club
Julia Ambler Linkedin
Get in Touch:
SOS Website
SOS Instagram
SOS Linkedin
