[musicale]

> I can’t see an easier way for a doctor to lose their patient’s trust than to treat their life, their whole being as the butt of a joke.

Many physicians (and some other medical staff) seem to enjoy mocking dying (or dead) or seriously ill patients and treating them as the punch line of a joke, and do so routinely - but doing it directly to the patient in question is usually considered bad taste.

It's an ugly practice, and one that can certainly alienate patients and family members when they overhear it, but I've heard it defended as "gallows humor" and a coping mechanism. Compassion, it is argued, is an inappropriate luxury.

Sometimes intentionally disparaging and mocking notes or comments are written in charts as well, much to the dismay of any patients who discover them.