Learning
In general, I'm a pretty compassionate health practitioner. I'm not good at building that professional distance. I worry. I worry about the recreational drugs my patients are doing. I worry about their financial states. I worry about the safety of their homes when I send them out of the hospital.
However.
I'm not good with mental status problems. I don't like it when patients are so out of it that they don't know what's going on and can't communicate what hurts. It scares me. I think I've managed to convince myself that my intelligence is all I can rely on no matter what, and seeing these patients makes me realize how false that assumption is.
There's a woman on our service. I can't say details due to privacy, but suffice it to say, she's been having mental status problems because of her medical problems, and they're getting worse. Much worse. Every day. Today we had to put a nasogastric tube in her to do tube feedings because she isn't eating or drinking by herself. While we did it I held one of her hands, the resident held the other, and my intern put in the tube. We were holding her hands both to calm her and to keep her from pulling the tube back out. I'd been kind of scared of this woman before; she was so unpredictable and embodied my fear of losing control. But I found myself patting her hand and talking to her to try to calm her. And I learned this compassion for this woman, whose situation was so alien to my own. It might be natural for most people, but for me, it took letting a certain guard down: admitting that we weren't so different, which is terrifying.
However.
I'm not good with mental status problems. I don't like it when patients are so out of it that they don't know what's going on and can't communicate what hurts. It scares me. I think I've managed to convince myself that my intelligence is all I can rely on no matter what, and seeing these patients makes me realize how false that assumption is.
There's a woman on our service. I can't say details due to privacy, but suffice it to say, she's been having mental status problems because of her medical problems, and they're getting worse. Much worse. Every day. Today we had to put a nasogastric tube in her to do tube feedings because she isn't eating or drinking by herself. While we did it I held one of her hands, the resident held the other, and my intern put in the tube. We were holding her hands both to calm her and to keep her from pulling the tube back out. I'd been kind of scared of this woman before; she was so unpredictable and embodied my fear of losing control. But I found myself patting her hand and talking to her to try to calm her. And I learned this compassion for this woman, whose situation was so alien to my own. It might be natural for most people, but for me, it took letting a certain guard down: admitting that we weren't so different, which is terrifying.