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Although the author could have developed further this piece on how to equip medical students and doctors to cope with the emotional pressures of working with patients and their families, it does capture the challenge of providing dispassionate advice with empathy. Quote:
“Turmoil.” The advice that is generally given, by those in medical school, courses on doctoring, senior colleagues, your peers, is to be sympathetic and removed. Complete dissociation from the red-eyed, pale individual pouring her story into your lap, however, is impossible. The encounters change you, sculpt your responses, awaken you from sleep. A night spent telling a roomful of family members that their sister will not survive til morning, explaining to a woman that her husband, healthy and playing football with his sons just 6 months ago, is now bedridden, are not carried out by an emotionless machine. It is the faces, the pressure of cold hands holding mine, and the hoarse “thank you”s that I remember most. The stern eyes of family who can’t help but blame you for the dissolution of their loved one’s flesh. The raspy breathing of a man lying with eyes closed between 4 steel enclosures in a white hospital bed – it is their faces and the stories of their failing bodies that stay with me. The courage of individuals to say “this is enough, please call my family, I need to say goodbye.”
Humility and humanity is required of us to best respect our patients.
