Love and Loss

There are no words to describe adequately the agony and profound grief when a physician suffers the loss of their child, spouse, sibling, parent, or relative. Although physicians are trained to cope with death in their professional lives, they need to learn to deal with loss in their personal lives, similar to all individuals. In this chapter, the authors describe how they were able to manage the complex emotions from loss and, from that process, become better physicians. This is a subcollection from the book, Becoming a Better Physician, which contains stories from doctors and doctors-to-be about the obstacles they faced, how they responded, and how the experience affected their lives, work, or perspectives to make them better physicians.