Yesterday, I arrived at a doctor’s office all spic and span in my little white coat, ready to play doctor. I was to be thrusted into the role of neophyte trainee for the next eight hours but to my surprise, I enjoyed the experience immensely. We saw a total of 7 or 8 women that day, each coming in with their unique problems and requests, but in my romanticized view perhaps, all were seeking a momentary solace in the doctor’s office from the pain and stresses of their everyday lives.
If I had to pinpoint what was so fun exactly about the experience, it is hard to pinpoint. I appreciated the trust and confidentiality that these women automatically offer up and the momentary glimpse into each of their lives. The doctor I shadowed is whip-smark, fast-talking and compassionate female practitioner. She reminds me of an old time cowboy, but instead of sharpshooting from her hips with smoking pistols, she dashes razor sharp beams from her eyes as she appraises you while her mouth goes off at 90 miles per minute, barely keeping up I’m sure with the rate of her neurons firing off the thoughts. To say I’m impressed by her intelligence would be an understatement. However I’m more impressed with the degree and dedication of her personal philosophy to the betterment of women, broadly and on an individual level.
She also put me to work too. I had to take histories of patients and then write up summaries. On occasion, I took blood pressure and looked up people’s noses. I made some glaring mistakes too. For instance, one patient who had just been in an auto accident comes in the second day and I failed to ask her one of the most basic questions anyone should ask of an automobile accident. Can anyone guess? It’s “Were you wearing a seatbelt?” I am definitely not a detail-oriented person, but hey, I’m working on it!
So at the end of the day, and it was a long one too, I walked away tired but happy, satisfied that I put in a good day’s work and that I was too busy the entire time to focus on my own pitiful problems or age old anxieties. But wait! My day was not even over. God had more pleasantries in store for me
In the evening, I went to this church in Philadelphia, dedicated to advancing the causes for the homeless, among its many philanthropic arms. I was to sit in on a focus group composed mainly of homeless men and discuss their opinions on health and what healthcare means to them individually. My word, I was in for a real treat. As fast as I could write (my job was to observe and record the contents of the focus group), I was dashing off 100 words/min as these people very passionately articulated their feelings about health and the state of healthcare in America today. One woman, the only one in the group, was particularly well spoken and commanded a real presence. She had a lot of really vindictive things to say about doctors. It was truly eye-opening. I felt that as a doctor in training, I am so fortunate to be hearing all this now, so that I can learn how to become a better physician when I do start practicing. The lady railed at everything from the physician not truly caring, the physician only interested in forming a nice, easily understandable picture in his/her mind, and the physician not respecting or seeing the patient as a true human being. She said doctors don’t look her in the eye, they can’t seem to even bring themselves to touch them on a human to human level, to showing caring in an unspoken way and to reserve their judgements, biases, self-perceived level of superiority and education. Such a disgrace! I can easily see many doctors behaving exactly as she had described.
Of course there are flip sides to the coin too. Many doctors are overworked and fatigued, whatever compassion they had as they entered medical school, bright eyed in that squirrelly manner has long since dimmed as they encounter the system for what it is. And a lot of physicians probably get disheartened once they realize how little of a difference they can truly make in a person’s health, when you take into account the whole person perspective, healthcare being so much more than just popping in a pill and downing it with water, in a timely manner.
So well, obviously this is not exactly going to be easy to sum up in a few short sentences. The issues brought up were complex and at times heart breaking. But after it was over, I reflected on how privileged I was, to be given a glimpse, (yet again), an intimate glimpse, in fact, to these people’s minds, thoughts, lives and personal, deeply personal stories. I’ve been reflecting for some time now on how everything is interconnected and everyone is connected to everyone else, but I felt that yesterday, by some divine force or grace, I was shown in a very powerful and real way how that is true. We are indeed all together in this. So to borrow a rather cheesy line from the show “Lost”, we either “live together, or we die alone.” And that can be interpreted on many many levels.
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