Leading with Empathy: The Contributions of Jeanne Quint-Benoliel to Palliative Medicine
Image via the University of Washington Magazine
Promoting compassion and support for patients, families, and nurses during end-of-life care
This article is part of our “The Power of Nursing” series, celebrating the Year of the Nurse by sharing the stories of influential nurses from throughout modern history.
COVID-19 has presented the world—and especially the medical field—with unprecedented challenges. Families, communities, and the healthcare system alike have seen loss at a rate never experienced before.
End-of-life care is emotionally challenging for healthcare providers. Nurses, who are on the frontline providing intensive care to critically ill patients, often struggle with the complexities of communicating with patients and their families in these vulnerable situations. And without the appropriate training, support, and self-care, it is common for palliative care nurses to experience difficulty both personally and professionally.
Jeanne Quint-Benoliel was the first in the healthcare field to draw attention to the importance of a thoughtful, compassionate approach to palliative care for all involved. Her research set the standard of care, benefiting patients, families, and healthcare staff in the United States and beyond.
Quint-Benoliel’s body of work made a mark on the medical field at all levels and is valuable now more than ever.
Taking on the “Conspiracy of Silence”
Jeanne Quint-Benoliel’s experiences early in her nursing career laid the foundation for her later work. Born in 1919, she enrolled in nursing school as soon as she turned 18 and graduated in 1941. She immediately joined the Army Nurse Corps and served during the Second World War.
Her first professional position in the nursing field, Quint-Benoliel’s time as a war nurse exposed her to a greater number of fatalities than she had previously encountered. Tending to young soldiers who were dying of malaria, dengue fever, and typhus, she very early in her career gained insight into the emotional complexities of palliative care.
It became a personal matter as well, when in 1956 Quint-Benoliel’s sister suffered a brain hemorrhage during her eighth month of pregnancy. Her family ultimately decided to take her sister off of life support, and Quint-Benoliel was struck at the insensitivity of the medical staff involved. She later wrote about what she called the “conspiracy of silence”, where the medical staff avoided all contact with the family while they awaited the decision about her sister. This experience stayed with her and deeply influenced her career from that point forward.
Shaping the Future of Palliative Care
Quint-Benoliel developed a keen interest in medical issues that were largely neglected both in research and patient care. In 1961—the beginning of her research career—she conducted a study that explored the profound impact of mastectomies on women. She later indicated that performing this study opened her eyes to the experiences of women living with uncertainty and fear of death.
In 1962, she joined a research team studying the correlation between patient experiences and taking care of the needs of nurses. Their findings validated her own experience with her sister’s death: nurses and physicians avoided dying patients. She also was one of the earliest researchers to recognize the emotional difficulty for nurses in caring for the dying and revisiting their own death awareness.
Quint-Benoliel’s research continued to have a profound impact on palliative medicine. She was one of very few nurses in the field of thanatology, the scientific study of death and the practices surrounding it. She was a thought leader in promoting communication between nurses, patients, and grieving families. She also developed specialized training for nurses in care of the dying.
Lasting Legacy
Upon her passing in 2012, the Journal of Hospice and Palliative Nursing wrote this in tribute to Jeanne Quint-Benoliel:
“She was a strong voice for nurses as professionals whose clinical expertise, knowledge, and scholarship should be valued. What many nurses remember most is that Jeanne taught us that, as nurses, we need to care for each other…To the core of her being she was committed most to the needs of seriously ill patients and families.”
Quint-Benoliel reminded the medical field that there is always opportunity to improve patient care and to show compassion and understanding to patients, families, and nurses alike.
The Foundation gratefully acknowledges the consultation provided by Drs. Cynthia Connolly and Patricia D’Antonio of the Barbara Bates Center for the Study of the History of Nursing. This article drew from an article published by The Journal of Hospice and Palliative Nursing upon Quint-Benoliel’s death.