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Mar. 1st, 2005 11:49 pmSome true things really make you feel like a jerk when you say them.
Today I told my research assistant, who wants to be either a physician or a psychologist: "One of the hardest and most important skills for a clinician to have is the ability to go out of the room and leave the patient behind you."
It didn't feel like a very human thing to say.
The impulse that leads her to brood over what will happen to a homeless, bipolar, drug-addicted, HIV-positive research subject she met, who has obviously critical mental health needs and yet couldn't be forced to stay in the hospital for psychiatric treatment - that's a good and human impulse. That's how people should care about each other.
"I told Dr. WardAttending about it, and she told me he was typical," she said miserably.
"Yeah," I said. "That's our patient population."
And it is. There are hundreds more just like that guy. If she carries every patient around with her, it will break her. She needs to learn to do what she can, with all of her caring and skill and compassion, and then leave the patient in the room when she goes out. It's a difficult lesson to learn, and probably none of us learns it perfectly. But I know from bitter personal experience that it is much, much more difficult if you don't learn that lesson.
I still felt like a jerk for saying it, though.
Today I told my research assistant, who wants to be either a physician or a psychologist: "One of the hardest and most important skills for a clinician to have is the ability to go out of the room and leave the patient behind you."
It didn't feel like a very human thing to say.
The impulse that leads her to brood over what will happen to a homeless, bipolar, drug-addicted, HIV-positive research subject she met, who has obviously critical mental health needs and yet couldn't be forced to stay in the hospital for psychiatric treatment - that's a good and human impulse. That's how people should care about each other.
"I told Dr. WardAttending about it, and she told me he was typical," she said miserably.
"Yeah," I said. "That's our patient population."
And it is. There are hundreds more just like that guy. If she carries every patient around with her, it will break her. She needs to learn to do what she can, with all of her caring and skill and compassion, and then leave the patient in the room when she goes out. It's a difficult lesson to learn, and probably none of us learns it perfectly. But I know from bitter personal experience that it is much, much more difficult if you don't learn that lesson.
I still felt like a jerk for saying it, though.
