Six Basic Rules of Palliative Care and Their Buddhist Counterparts

As healthcare workers in palliative care, every day brings its share of awfulness and beauty, suffering and connection, meaning and cynicism. Without a way to support ourselves, we cannot help our patients, let alone one another. But how do we cope? Despite the unpredictability inherent in our work, we can discern certain patterns that offer an approach for dealing with these stressors. These patterns can be summarized into six simple rules of palliative care-rules that are coterminous with the teachings of Buddhism. Recognizing the synergy between our role in palliative care and ancient observations about dealing with life's difficulties can help us with the stress of providing conscientious care within a system that relentlessly tries to stop us from doing so. Such considerations offer one of many paths we might choose to cope with this challenging work.