Home
/
doctor-patient communication
/
Page 8

Tag: doctor-patient communication

Mom Journeys to the Other Side

William Bryan August 26, 2011 No Comments

William Bryan

Mom was not fully conscious when she crossed over, but I’m quite certain she was aware of both sides of the veil as she departed the realm of the living. This is a brief story of her dying.

After my dad died, more than twenty years ago, my mom moved from our family home to live with my brother, Jim, and his wife, Barb.

In retrospect, it was an act of supreme foresight, ensuring that she’d be able to stay in a family setting even if she became unable to care for herself at some point. She enjoyed many quality years with her four grandchildren and traveled with her family to Greece, Maui and Croatia, among other exotic places.

Mom’s travels came to

A Passage in India

Justin Sanders June 24, 2011 No Comments

Justin Sanders

“It’s cooler this morning,” I said to Seema, as we left the hospital grounds en route to our home visits.

It was a bright and bustling morning in Trivandrum, the capital of India’s southwesternmost state, Kerala. A third-year resident in family medicine, I had come here to work with the staff of an Indian nonprofit devoted to advancing palliative care services across India. Seema was a young, newly qualified junior doctor who had only recently joined the organization. We were traveling with five others–our driver, two nurses and two nursing trainees–into the mountains east of Trivandrum for the day.

“We don’t really speak about the weather like you do,” Seema gently chided. “In the West you spend lots of time talking about the

One Hundred Wiser

Anne K. Merritt April 22, 2011 No Comments

Anne K. Merritt

I gather my belongings: stained white coat, stethoscope, pen light, black ballpoint. I stuff the last two granola bars into my canvas bag. I glance at the clock on the microwave, which is three minutes fast.

Twenty-two minutes until my shift begins. One minute before I will lock the door to my apartment.

Precision is critical: ER shifts change fast and blend together, from late nights to early mornings to mid-afternoons. Suns set and rise, moons disappear then burst again into full spheres of light. But the rhythm remains fixed.

I gulp the last ounces of water and grab my keys just as the clock digits change.

Last week, I reached and surpassed my hundredth shift as a resident physician in the

Recovery Room

Warren Holleman April 1, 2011 No Comments

Warren Holleman

We’re sitting in a circle: seven women and me. Most are in their thirties and forties, and in their second, third or fourth month of sobriety. They look professional in the suits they’ve assembled from the donations closet of our inner-city recovery center.

I start things off by reminding everyone that this is the last day of the group. The last hour, in fact.

All eyes turn to Dorothy.

Dorothy is a proud woman, tall and tough and strong. And a former track and field star, although now she’s wheelchair-bound.

She speaks in a deep, husky, monotone punctuated occasionally by dramatic earthquakes–otherwise known as spastic tremors. But in all this time, she’s avoided talking about herself, fueling the suspicion that she’s hiding something

Things That Matter

Paul Gross December 24, 2010 No Comments

Paul Gross

For me, the best part of being a doctor, and the biggest privilege, is getting to talk with people about things that matter.

“You look sad today,” I say to a patient I’m seeing for the first time–a thirty-eight-year-old woman with a headache. In response, her lower lip starts to tremble, and she wipes an eye.

As I reach for the box of tissues and hand it to her, I know that whatever has caused her tears will be more important than her presenting symptom.

A forty-five-year-old man comes in wanting help sustaining erections. When I ask for a few details, it turns out he’s having sex every single day of the week, and he’s finding it a challenge to maintain an erection

Toothache

Majid Khan October 15, 2010 No Comments

Majid Khan

I always look forward to meeting new patients–and I confess that I have a particular fondness for young patients. They are, you see, at the point in their lives where everything is possible. It’s possible to have fun when other people might feel upset, possible to enjoy oneself on Friday night after a hard week of work (or study) rather than complaining about being too tired. I love sharing in their dreams, their joys, their fun and their excitement.

My first patient this morning is 30-year-old Kieran. We’ve never met; I wonder what she’s been up to, and if she’s planning any adventures. I’m looking forward to chatting, to exploring the “biopsychosocial” aspect of her medical complaint, as I keep urging my own

Dr. B Gets an F

Gregory Shumer August 20, 2010 No Comments

Gregory Shumer

Flashback to a year ago: I’m a first-year medical student–a fledgling, a novice–trying to integrate countless facts into a coherent understanding of how the human body works. Professors slam me with two months’ worth of information inside of two weeks’ time. They tell us that this is a necessary process, one that all doctors must go through: we must first learn the science of medicine before we can master the art of healing.

My life revolves around tests, labs, deadlines, long hours in the library and very close relationships with the baristas at Starbucks.

In the midst of this chaos, I developed a crippling ankle condition that transformed me into a concerned patient for the first time in my life. The pain started

Pearls Before Swine

Kate Lewis May 28, 2010 No Comments

Kate Lewis

I’m a third-year medical student, and I’m starting the second day of my new rotation–a month that I’ll spend with a family physician, Dr. Bauer, in his small, efficient home-based office.

Yesterday, my first day, a young woman named Sara came in for “strep throat.” She had dark Latina eyes, broad cheekbones and a delicate tattoo of the Chinese character for “dream” on her left wrist. She was 17 and seeking out a primary-care doctor for the first time in her life; I applauded her for taking responsibility for her own health care. Her tonsils were big and purple, covered in pus, but the rapid strep test was negative. She also reported a vaginal discharge. Dr. Bauer wanted to do a pelvic exam

Chris

Lisa deMauro August 28, 2009 No Comments

Lisa deMauro

My big sister Chris, 55, had recently returned to her first career, nursing, when she wrenched her back one day while helping to lift a patient. After weeks of physical therapy proved unhelpful, her internist ordered some tests, which indicated that her back injury might signal something more sinister. She’d had a lumpectomy for a “stage 0” breast cancer five years earlier, and her doctor advised her to make an appointment with the newly appointed head of a brand-new cancer center nearby.

Chris and I were nine years apart–a difference that precluded any sisterly rivalry–and we’d always been very close. She’d occupied a central role in my life: first, as a playful second mother to me, then as my ideal of teenage glamour,

Invisible Thread

Donald O. Kollisch July 31, 2009 No Comments

Donald O. Kollisch

From: Michael

To: Donald O. Kollisch
Subject: Serious medical update

Don,

I can’t say for sure why I’m writing to you, but you were such an important part of my life during the onset of my illness that I feel a strong desire to communicate with you.

The mysterious autoimmune disorder that was lurking in my body has finally had the decency to declare itself. Unfortunately, it is systemic sclerosis, also called systemic scleroderma, which means I’m facing a gradual but ultimately fatal process of skin, joint and organ degeneration.

It has hit my lungs, seriously affecting my breathing capacity, and has hit my digestive system also. Recently I was in the hospital

Breaking Bad News

Paul Gross April 24, 2009 No Comments

Bad news is like a lump of red-hot coal that lands in your palm–and that you can’t let go of, no matter how badly you’d like to.

I was tossed the burning coal over twenty years ago, when I was thirty years old and fit as a fiddle. Or so I thought. I also happened to be a first-year medical student, having my head filled with facts large and small about the human body.

Then something started to go wrong.

Heart to Heart

Janani Krishnaswami March 27, 2009 No Comments

Janani Krishnaswami

I first met you in pre-op. It was my first week as a third-year medical student; my white coat was still white, the hidden interior pockets empty and the ten gel pens neatly tucked in my front pocket still leak-free. Stationed on a surgery rotation, I had officially spent twelve hours in the operating room–a frantic, exhausting blur of standing on tiptoe, gripping surgical retractors and struggling to avoid contaminating the sterile operating field where the surgeons neatly clipped and cut. You were the next case. From your chart I knew the barest facts: your name was Marie; you were forty-five years old, diagnosed with invasive breast cancer and scheduled for surgical removal of both cancer-ridden breasts

As I made my way to

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: doctor-patient communication

Mom Journeys to the Other Side

A Passage in India

One Hundred Wiser

Recovery Room

Things That Matter

Toothache

Dr. B Gets an F

Pearls Before Swine

Chris

Invisible Thread

Breaking Bad News

Heart to Heart

Subscribe to Pulse.

It's free.

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: doctor-patient communication

Start typing and press enter to search

Subscribe to Pulse.

It's free.