ABSTRACT
In attempts to understand personhood and the relationships of its many aspects to illness, some have concentrated on the threat of illness as source of suffering. In this regard, it emphasized the suffering resulting from the feeling that life no longer has value or meaning. Others have emphasized the threat to personal autonomy and identity, the threat of loss, the fear of death and the change in role relationships. In particular, we want to focus on the physician's suffering peculiar to members of psychiatric staff confronted with a patient who is dying of physical illness. This patient's dying forced us to recognize the occurrence of suffering among the physicians and staff who treated the patient. To reiterate the definition of suffering, it is a state of severe distress associated with events that threaten the intactness of the person. The admissions office psychiatrist, when faced with dying patient, delegated ego functions to the oncologist by behaving as though the oncologist knew best.
