Gary Clover reviews a book by Sue Marsden, published by Mary Egan Publishing.

The “Elisabeth” of the title is Dr Elisabeth Kubler-Ross, a pioneer in the field of palliative care and author of On Death and Dying. The author, Dr Sue Marsden, is a retired New Zealand oncologist. In the late 1980s, after attending a Kubler-Ross workshop and training with her “E.K.R” facilitating team in New Zealand, Dr Marsden became a palliative care specialist. She facilitated self-awareness workshops in Australasia, South East Asia, USA, and Zimbabwe, and taught Palliative Medicine in hospitals, hospices and communities. Her book is essentially a series of at times viscerally raw recollections of her personal relationships with patients in palliative care and their end-of-life stories through which Marsden learnt the value and truth of Kubler-Ross’s mantra, “You need to deal with your own shit first”.

In short, the book preaches, “Self-awareness when working with people at the end of life … ” As an honest and moving account of her own journey travelled with her patients, Marsden highlights the importance of the physician – or any carer – practicing the art of “self-reflection”. Every very personal story, every encounter she relates, promotes new learnings and provoked this reader to “self-reflect” on his own stories. Some of her stories were so deeply moving I found myself choking up as they brought back hidden memories of my own raw emotions and spiritual crises which got in the way of my caring because I had not fully faced and dealt with them.

With disarming honesty Marsden relates her successes and failures as doctor and patient together faced existential suffering and end-of-life issues. These encompassed all four of the “quadrant” of physical, emotional, spiritual and intellectual crises that can afflict the human person. Above all, they highlight the fundamental importance of human “connection”, of being fully present with the other, and of carer “self-care”, in order to foster meaning and hope for those who have run out of hope. The last two chapters relate practical steps for doing so.

All carers, whether medical, palliative or pastoral, in hospitals, hospices, rest homes or churches, would find much value and lots for self-reflection, from reading Dr Marsden’s stories. A stirring, engaging, beautiful little book. Highly recommended.