Provision of Appropriate Care as a Source of Clinician Distress

Clinicians are dedicated to helping others, healing the sick, and protecting the healthy from becoming sick. Obviously, clinicians would prefer to help others without causing them any distress. But, appropriate care includes procedures and interventions that can cause pain, distress, and sometimes even suffering. Clinicians must therefore accept that they frequently have to cause their patients to experience pain and distress. Because patients' distress tends to be short-lived, the resulting distress on the treating clinicians is typically minimal. However, when provision of appropriate care requires clinicians to cause their patients to suffer, the clinicians themselves can experience significant distress. This distress can reduce team cohesion, increase clinician burnout, and undermine clinicians' confidence in the care they provide. In this essay, we describe this source of clinician distress, assess its implications for clinical practice, and begin to consider ways to address it.