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Should doctors go to patients' funerals?

BMJ 2007; 334 doi: https://doi.org/10.1136/bmj.39251.616678.47 (Published 21 June 2007) Cite this as: BMJ 2007;334:1322

Rapid Response:

Select your funerals carefully

In the rehabilitation field one sees patients over many years and so
get to know them well - as well as their families. However there are
funerals I will attend out of respect and those I will not - these latter
usually because there have been traumatic issues around the time of death,
so that my presence might serve only to allow questions, or
recriminations, that would be out of place.

Patients' funerals can be very humbling. I remember one, of a police
officer who had many years before sustained a high spinal cord injury
while on duty, whom I had got to know very well through the numerous
alarms and excursions attendant on someone with only half a diaphragm to
breathe with. Or so I thought. The service was packed with police officers
whose tributes made me realise how little I knew him and how arrogant I
had been to presume that I did.

Competing interests:
None declared

Competing interests: No competing interests

02 July 2007
Andrew N Bamji
Consultant (Rheumatology/Rehabilitation
Queen Mary's Hospital, Sidcup DA14 6LT UK