A junior doctor’s reflections on what he has learnt so far, and how much more he has to go.
As a student, my patients were “the hepatomegaly in Bed 5”, and as a HO, it quickly became “the sickie in Bed 20 who is bleeding AGAIN”. But I’ve learnt that my patient with a lipoma is seeing me not because he wants the lump removed, but because he wants to hear that it is not cancer.
I’ve realised that in the same breath that I diagnose epilepsy, I destroy the livelihood of my patient who is a bus driver, and I shatter the hopes of a young female newlywed who wants to start a family – how is she going to do so now that I have told her of all the teratogenic effects of anti-epileptic drugs?
I realise that communication is more than simply a set of core skills or templates (think S-P-I-K-E-S for breaking bad news), where one is marked based on saying the correct things. In all this, I cannot simply treat the disease and neglect the patient.
And I realise that I often get it wrong, and am still learning – learning to meet my patients in their need, learning to truly take an interest in their lives, and learning to journey with them through their hopes and fears.
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Excerpt from Growth as a physician, SMA News, July 2019, Pg 20 – 21
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