Tonight's picture was taken in October of 2007. That weekend, as we did most weekends in the Fall, we took Mattie to a Fall Festival. I remember the first two years we took Mattie to a festival, he had to be around 3 and 4 years old, and he was deathly afraid of these huge hay slides! However Peter would sit Mattie in his lap and they would go down the slides together. Mattie enjoyed the slide with company. However, as this 2007 photo illustrated, Mattie wanted to go down the slide alone. It was a first! If you look closely, Peter was at the top of the slide bending down and most likely got Mattie positioned to go down. I of course met Mattie at the base of the slide. We watched Mattie like a hawk and always tried to keep him safe and protected. The true irony of life.
Quote of the day: We bereaved are not alone. We belong to the largest company in all the world--the company of those who have known suffering. ~ Helen Keller
On Tuesday I reported about my most recent trip to see my urologist! Visiting her office is never an easy process because chances are I always run into someone with an attitude. Honestly attitude needs to be checked at the doctor if one decides to work in a doctor's office. People are too sick, tired, and worried, to have to expend energy on thoughtlessness and insensitivities. My Tuesday posting triggered many emails to me, telling me how you related to my story, with your own doctor visits! That is a sad commentary in and of itself because what it points out is there is a major system problem and my Tuesday experience is NOT an isolated incident. Something that I knew, but your emails just further solidified it in my mind.
My friend and colleague read my posting from this week and she sent me a New York Times article entitled, Who will heal the doctor?! I have to tell you when I read the title and the first paragraph of the article, my initial reaction was......... who is going to heal the doctor? Who cares?!!! I admit to being patient and family centric. But this article brings to light a very crucial issue..... if the doctor isn't well supported and given a sense of autonomy to practice then he/she can't possibly do an effective job with a patient. It all comes down to training of medical doctors and also to our medical leaders to stand up and fight for their profession. A profession that is regulated by health insurance companies, paper work, and unreasonable demands to see a certain number of patients per day. The article also clearly points out that medical programs inadequately provide opportunities for students to verbalize feelings and share emotions about work, cases, and how it impacts them. I would have to tell you that feelings and emoting them do NOT come naturally to all of us, these skills need to be taught and emulated just like learning about anatomy and physiology. If students see their mentors devoid of emotion or worse if students are penalized for having feelings, guess what this produces???!!! A medical robot, not a provider of care to human beings.
I have a feeling Denise sent me this article because so much of what is reflected in the link below are sentiments I expressed in Tuesday's posting. I am not a medical doctor, but have interacted with enough doctors and lived in a hospital for a long enough period of time to fully qualify myself to make a statement about the inadequacies of our health care system. The article quotes a primary care doctor, who stated, “by far, the biggest barrier to being a compassionate healer in our current working environment is time. We simply don’t have the time we need to do our jobs well. And we all lose."
Two other paragraphs in the article caught my attention. They are:
This is a common misconception. As I reported, being emotionally attuned can help a doctor, or anyone for that matter, function better. Indeed, the notion that a doctor is an objective, Spock-like, scientist whose job is to come up with the one best solution to your problem is a view that is out of step with research on medical outcomes and much of what is known about the therapeutic aspects of the patient-doctor relationship. People are not widgets; medicine cannot be reduced to cutting and sewing or putting chemicals into the body; it’s full of mystery. Doctors can often make a difference in how patients feel simply by being caring and concerned.
More and more people are living with incurable diseases that would have killed them a short time ago. As the population ages, more health care will be directed to patients with chronic or terminal conditions. For doctors, care will become less a question of curing a disease than helping their patients to live as well as possible in the face of their illnesses. That’s not the job they train you for in medical school. But in this emerging context, the doctor patient relationship becomes even more central. It may be the quality of this relationship that determines whether doctors can cope with, and derive satisfaction, from care that involves far less clinical certainty or control.
These two paragraphs resonate with me because first, the patient-doctor relationship doesn't only benefit the patient. It also is a protective factor for the doctor. Patients who feel they relate to their doctor and that their doctor listens to them, are going to find that patients are more candid and report more accurately about their symptoms. In addition, as the article mentions, doctors also need a reason and a purpose to practice. Part of what gives us all purpose in life is the special connection we make to others.
Secondly, I saw this with Mattie's treatment journey, doctors were all on board when we were fighting and doing surgeries and chemotherapy. When the fighting ended because it was clear Mattie was losing the battle, doctors looked frazzled and in a quandary. That is because they are trained to heal and do. But many medical situations for both young and old lead to end of life care, and doctors feel this is where their tour of duty ends. After all how do you help someone die?! I bet there is NO course on this in med school!!!! How can a doctor still be a healer in such a case? HOW???????? Well if a patient-doctor relationship is established then this simple human connection I believe will take over and doctors will then see that there are things to be done such as providing comfort, support, pain management, and to help understand the patient's hopes and wishes of how she/he wants to die. These are huge to dos and are a crucial part of the field of medicine!
Needless to say, I got a lot out of reading this article, and I hope you do as well. Also the responses below the article are just as fascinating as the article itself!
ARTICLE: Who will heal the doctors?
http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/10/02/who-will-heal-the-doctors/?_r=1
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