The Physician’s Role in Responding to Existential Suffering: What Does It Mean to Comfort Always?

Existential suffering is commonly experienced by patients with serious medical illnesses despite the advances in the treatment of physical and psychological symptoms that often accompany incurable diseases. Palliative care (PC) clinicians wishing to help these patients are faced with many barriers including the inability to identify existential suffering, lack of training in how to address it, and time constraints. Although mental health and spiritual care providers play an instrumental role in addressing the existential needs of patients, PC clinicians are uniquely positioned to coordinate the necessary resources for addressing existential suffering in their patients. With this article, we present a case of a patient in existential distress and a framework to equip PC clinicians to assess and address existential suffering.