comfort care Archives

Where She Will Be

Francie Camper December 7, 2018 7 Comments

Francie Camper ~

City snow blankets my little mother in her hospital
bed in her bedroom, no wonder she is confused,
pointing to things in the air, on the ceiling that only
she can see. She might be hailing a cab. She raises
her head to tell me, Four members of the Isenberg
family came to visit and one was Mima Ettel,
who is already buried in the plot and she doesn’t
seem to know this. A land of the living and a land
of the dead, why should she have to remember
the difference? We paid a thousand dollars to move
her grandfather’s monument to make room for her.

Comfort Care

Sarah Buttrey April 29, 2017 No Comments

When a year ago he arrived at the clinic, he was a hard-working man with neck pain, there with his expectant wife and their adoring toddler. No one had anticipated a tumor.

Deathbed Epiphany

Christina Johnson November 4, 2016 11 Comments

As a family-practice resident, I’ve found that a premium is placed not only on my clinical acumen but also on how well I respond to my patients’ mental and emotional experience of illness.

Yet the work of learning to be a doctor is just that–work. And in overwhelming amounts. Time management becomes ever more vital: As I take the time needed to gently break bad news and to console a patient, I must also stay conscious of the next patient’s appointment, the next phone call to make, the next exam to study for, the next lecture to attend, the next research project to complete and the next practice guideline to learn.

Crash Course

Marilyn Barton October 7, 2016 5 Comments

Marilyn Barton

“Nursing students needed to work in the University Hospital, good pay, orientation.”

As a rising nursing-school senior in the 1970s, I naïvely applied for the job above without getting the full details. No one mentioned that I’d be working in a psychiatric unit housing twenty-five aggressive, catatonic or schizophrenic patients, many of whom had been locked away for years.

The entrance sign, which should have read “Locked Psych/Med/Surg Unit,” said simply “5 East.”

On my first evening shift, I overheard two nurses discussing how to monitor a new patient, transferred from the federal psych facility across town.

“Can we get the student to do it?” said one.

Natural Selection

Jeremy Shatan December 9, 2011 1 Comment

Jeremy Shatan

By the time my wife and I reached Hospital B’s exam room, early in the afternoon, we’d already put in a very long day.

Across the room, which was no bigger than a galley kitchen, stood three doctors. One–I’ll call him the Chief–was the bearded, bushy-maned head of the pediatric oncology program. His explosion of salt-and-pepper hair made a startling contrast to his posh British accent. With him were Dr. Transplant, a small, kind-faced woman who specialized in bone-marrow and stem-cell transplants, and Dr. Nice, a genial young pediatrician with a Midwestern accent.

We were there with our fourteen-month-old son, Jacob. A week earlier, he’d had brain

fostering the humanistic practice of medicine publishing personal accounts of illness and healing encouraging health care advocacy

fostering the humanistic practice of medicine publishing personal accounts of illness and healing encouraging health care advocacy

Tag: comfort care

Where She Will Be

Comfort Care

Deathbed Epiphany

Crash Course

Natural Selection

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fostering the humanistic practice of medicine publishing personal accounts of illness and healing encouraging health care advocacy

fostering the humanistic practice of medicine publishing personal accounts of illness and healing encouraging health care advocacy

Tag: comfort care

Where She Will Be

Comfort Care

Deathbed Epiphany

Crash Course

Natural Selection

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