Bedside Manner

As an educator, my students reacted not to the universities I attended, the degrees I earned, or my experience in the profession, but to my enthusiasm, creativity, compassion and respect. Assuming that I understood the material, they cared more about how I treated them as individuals.

Dear Pulse readers,

I was a medical student, nearing the end of my very first clinical rotation–surgery–and I’d had enough.

I’d made a breast-cancer patient weep as I’d unsuccessfully tried to extract blood from an artery in her wrist.