Prominently featured in the mission statements of virtually of every medical school and medical institution in the world is the call for empathetic doctors. These institutions wish to train medical professionals that possess qualities of sympathy and compassion, and hospitals wish to employ health professionals that showcase similar qualities. The reality, however, is starkly different, as physicians, jaded by what they have seen in the medical world, lose the qualities that drove them to medicine in the first place. In Frank Huyler’s “The Blood of Strangers,” a collection of short stories from his time as a physician in the emergency room, Huyler uses the literary techniques of irony and imagery to depict the reality of the world of a medical professional. While Huyler provides several examples of both techniques in his accounts, moments from “A Difference of Opinion” and “The Secret” in particular stand out. Huyler uses irony and imagery in these two pieces to describe how medical professionals have lost their sense of compassion and empathy due to being jaded and desensitized by the awful incidents they have witnessed during their careers. In a particularly morbid display of irony, Huyler, an emergency room physician who has pledged to serve the health of humanity, wishes his comatose patient was dead. In “A Difference of Opinion,” Huyler is treating a patient who has been in the Intensive Care Unit (ICU) for over a month and showed little sign of improving. Due to the
Dr. Vincent Lam is a profound Canadian physician and writer. Bloodletting and Miraculous Cures is his award winning novel that speaks on the reality of what it’s actually like to be in medical school aiming to be apart of a medical profession and the difficult expectations students must face while still managing to stay sane during those challenging years of their lives. It’s a collection of short stories partly based off of his experiences in the medical field, following the lives of fictional characters Ming, Fitzgerald, Chen, and Sri as they endure medical school and later work as doctors. Dr. Lam does a remarkable job at incorporating unique and compelling characters with intriguing storylines who face common and extraordinary moral dilemmas that seem to shape their overall characters. Lam introduces themes of love, fear, tradition, drugs, death, self doubt, duality, etc.
In Cutting for Stone Thomas Stone asks, “What treatment in an emergency is administrated by ear?” The correct answer is “Words of comfort.” Just this one statement encapsulates the books surprising take on medicine this question also reminds me of experiences I have had with doctors and hospitals. I will be discussing these topics along with how Cutting for Stone tells us about the roles of compassion, faith, and hop in medicine.
Any hospitalization is a stressful situation for all parties, the patient and family. In this scenario it is even more stressful because it is a life and death decision. Mr. Y’s brother is diabetic with a history of high blood pressure. Mr. Y has to face the ethical issues of quality of life versus quantity of life in deciding to follow his brother’s wishes or not. Mr. Y most likely did not understand a lot of what was happening and may have felt that it was too heavy a decision to let his brother die if no heroic measures were taken. Mt. Y asked for his niece’s opinion, indicating Mr. Y’s inability to make a decision.
Throughout our lives, we are plagued by the notion of ‘ethics’ or morals - the basis of our everyday behavior. The medical field is no exception, with doctors constantly reminded of the ethical duties they must carry out for each of their patients. An example of unethical doctors is demonstrated in Daniel Keyes’s short story, Flowers for Algernon. The story features Charlie Gordon, a man with an intellectual disability who strives to become smarter. He is a candidate for a new surgical procedure that is used to triple one’s intelligence which was directed by Dr. Strauss and Dr. Nemur. Although the procedure holds promise for helping a vast amount of people, Dr. Nemur and Dr. Strauss acted unethically by selecting Charlie to undergo the operation because they did not finish testing the procedure and because Charlie was unable to make a proper decision.
When asked what trait a physician bears in the 21st century, most would agree with compassion. Pierre Elias author of the narrative essay, “Insensible Losses: When The Medical Community Forgets The Family”, argues that physicians may be compassionate when it comes to their patients, but “lack a systematic approach to communicating with families when a patient’s health deteriorates unexpectedly, requiring a change in care providers” (Elias 707). Pierre Elias is a medical student from Duke University. He is nearing the end of his clinical rotations when he is forced by his inner moral conscience to deliver difficult news to a patient’s family whom no other physician makes time for.
Melvin Konner, in “Basic Clinical Skills”, uses a first person point of view along with some bits of humor in order to establish a more relatable narrator. He discusses several topics such as the relationship between doctors and their patients, the healthcare given in hospitals, and the role that the physician plays in different contexts of life.
During the year I have spent in the emergency department of Broward Health Medical Center, I have observed amazing cases and witnessed the dynamic qualities of a physician, such as being a critical thinker, showing compassion and expressing empathy. A competent physician must simultaneously function as a confident teacher and humble student to do well in the constantly evolving field of medicine. As I observed the bedside manner of the emergency department physicians, they were always concerned for the patient 's best interest and often went the “the extra mile” for their patients. I admired their dedication and will strive to treat my patients with a similar level of respect and compassion in my future practice.
Generally, life can be separated into two phases: the first being the “coming of age” where people transition into adulthood and realize that there is not as much good in the world as there first appeared to be. The second phase is the aftermath, where people either learn to cope with the cruelties of life or simply fail. Bloodletting and Miraculous Cures, by Vincent Lam, follows a group of medical students as they train to become doctors and how they learn to deal with different social pressures that accompanies the profession. At the beginnings of the characters’ medical journeys, they are all ecstatic to get into medical school, each having their own reason, such as “good intentions” or to appease their parents (Lam 10). However, as the characters begin to ease into doctoral life, the
While the novel most explicitly questions the power of physicians in its dramatic organ theft plot, Cook weaves this theme throughout the details of the text, beginning with the opening pages. The exacting nature of Cook’s prose offers a mirror for the highly controlled medical environment:
In conclusion, Person introduces two conflicting opinions of the main message, medical ethics. However, there is a bias towards Jenna’s initial view, and the opinions of Lily and Alleys. Overall, the author uses this book as a way of showing us the ever-more relevant debate of medical ethics, but wants us to make our own decision of what view to
Everywhere you turn, there is a patient with a unique medical story, and they are all connected through a common purpose. Looking at the many rooms lining the hospital hallways strikes up my curiosity of every patient who ever laid in the
Doctors have maintained credibility for their ability to treat and cure for centuries. By earning the title of Doctor, it is common for them to be given automatic respect and admiration. However, William Carlos Williams' “The Use of Force” reveals the phenomenon that unconditional trust may paradoxically have a negative impact on the doctor-patient relationship. His narration contrasts the characteristics expected in a doctor to that of his own personal feelings and emotions.
“I remember a woman in her 60s I was treating for metastatic breast cancer. She was admitted to the hospital with gastric bleeding that was thought to be unrelated to her cancer. I talked to her and her husband and was optimistic about the reversibility of the problem. Because I was trying not to scare her, I did not discuss the issues of advanced directives and resuscitation. That night, she went into shock, required intubation, and went to the intensive care unit. Her husband was devastated and angry that she had had such treatment. The next day, he and I together decided that no additional treatment would be given to prevent her death. He sat with her for more than 24 hours before she died. My desire to be optimistic prolonged her dying
Schweinle., 16). It is a very important border that the medical society has set to prevent doctors’ feelings interfere their work. If a doctor would be “sharing” feelings of suffer and pain of their patients, it could radically impact their professional skills and cold-mind, which are needed for a decision making. Yet Ellen D. Mandel and William E. Schweinle stated that empathy is one of fundamental skills of medical worker and is described as “a) an ability to understand the patient’s situation, perspective, and feelings, (b) communicate an accurate understanding, and then (c) act on the understanding in a therapeutic manner” (Mandel, Ellen D., and William E. Schweinle., 16). However, coming back to the oath of Hippocrates, it is intriguing that “the father of medicine” encouraged such a strong type of patient-doctor relationship while modern doctors fail to even provide empathy, which is a strongly suggested and wanted skill. (based on an institution as influential as Association of American Medical Colleges (AAMC) recommended that empathy should be integrated and assessed in medical students,)
The most unpleasant healthcare experience was with a plastic surgeon at Faulkner Hospital. This was her first time at this healthcare professional’s office, in which she was visiting for a biopsy on a lump located in her right breast. The reason for this visit being the worst experience was not completely to do with the hospital or its staff; it was the consequences of the biopsy. She was exceptionally apprehensive and on edge while she was, sitting tight waiting to be seen for the biopsy procedure and the staff was not very comforting. (D. Walenten, 2014) She was feeling a range of emotions due to fear and she was in a sense powerless. This is the point at which the staff ought to be consoling for the patient’s sake. The staff member lacked empathy, which is critical. (Communicating about health., 2014)