LEKARZ WOBEC CZŁOWIEKA STAREGO

Abstract

The principal aim of activities for seniors is to assure the tendency to reach better quality of their living (and of their passing away - what has nothing to do with euthanasia or negligence). The point is to regard an elderly as a storehouse of wisdom and practical experience, further - as a human being who is still able - until the last days of the life - to develop spiritually and to get more mature, as someone who is interesting, demanded within and by the society as well as among family members and friends. If a physician considers a senior this way, it should be much easier for him to understand such a person and to respect his reasons for to negotiate together adequate medical recommendations. Respective motivation (from both emotional and intellectual points of view) of physicians desiring to become specialists in geriatrics should be very carefully built already during their studies of medicine, if not even before. Also necessary is a process of building an integrated personality of such a physician and „working through” by him of such existential problems as incurable, terminal disease, sufferings and the inevitability of death.