Jacinto Bátiz is one of the most media-friendly voices in palliative medicine. For 24 years he was head of the Palliative Care Unit at the San Juan de Dios Hospital in Santurce-Vizcaya and since 2017 he has been director of the Institute for Better Care, at the same hospital, for dissemination and awareness-raising. He is also one of the regular contributors to the Bioethics Observatory website.
After retiring he continued his teaching activity, publishing articles and writing books such as “Hacia una cultura paliativa” or “¡Cuidadme así!”, which he talked about at the San Camilo Health Humanization Center where we interviewed him. –He says that with some of his journalistic articles, he has achieved more than by writing a book.
- What responsibility does the media have to achieve changes in healthcare?
- The media has a fundamental role to play in these matters. Palliative care doctors have ideas, but we don’t know how to communicate them, and journalists don’t have ideas, but they know how to communicate so that society understands them. When a journalist appears at a conference, I’m happy, because I know that he will know how to transmit it and spread it. Society needs to know what palliative care is, and unless it experiences it first-hand, it is a reality that it doesn’t know about.
- In this sense, what would Humanizar magazine recommend?
- Now we have a very good instrument, which is social media, and we have to be there, for example, by spreading the word about the Palliative Care Conferences that are held at the San Camilo Centre. Activities with which you manage to humanise and also to demand that palliative care is not the privilege of a few, but a right for all.
- Would palliative culture be possible without the humanisation of health?
- At the moment, health professionals are very committed to preventive medicine, and we are clear about curative medicine, but when we are not capable of either of these things, palliative medicine comes along. A subject that is not taught at university, we learn it in practice when we have to be with the patient and accompany him. Palliative medicine is that of accompaniment, of human approach, which the patient needs most at that moment. More than a dignified death, we have to humanize the process of dying: answering the patient’s questions, listening to him, touching him, accompanying him… making him feel that he is the center of our attention.
- Is it a challenge for society?
- A society is measured by its degree of responsibility in caring for the weakest, dependent, fragile, vulnerable and suffering people. It is not about making a law to eliminate the person who suffers, but about making laws that eliminate the suffering of people. Nobody wants to suffer… However, suffering is inherent to human life. The psychologist is essential to show the different angles of suffering and help the patient to face them with their own resources. This is how we work in palliative care: addressing the physical, emotional or psychological, social and family dimensions, and the spiritual or transcendental dimension. The latter is the one that sees the greatest demand at the end of life, when the patient says to you “help me give meaning to my life”, something that goes beyond the religious.
- What can be done to generate a palliative culture?
- Approaching the centres of society where these issues are debated: town halls, associations, neighbourhoods… where we can explain what palliative care is. Talking about death helps to avoid resistance among patients. Information clarifies concepts, because there are still people who confuse sedation with euthanasia. Creating culture also means training doctors and professionals in the fact that palliative medicine is not the medicine of charity, it is not “a pat on the back” but a scientifically proven medicine with scientific evidence; it is also effective and efficient. This is the message we need to get across to professionals and citizens. When we implement palliative care for citizens, we will be achieving a palliative culture, for which the following are essential: dissemination or awareness, training, research and innovation. All to provide better care.
*Article published in the Humanizar magazine in November-December 2024.
