As a junior doctor,hospital patients were my teachers and I learned more than in my previous five years at medical schoolMy first house job was in a London teaching hospital, where I worked a full five-day week as well as one night and one weekend in three (weekends started early Friday morning and didn’t finish until Monday evening). I looked after haematology and oncology patients. I worked, and lived and spent my life in the hospital.
There were no nurses to select blood,give chemotherapy, set up drips, order or read tests. There were no senior doctors at weekends and life would bear been lonely had it not been for my patients. Many were in the hospital for extended periods,and in between mundane procedures I filled time at their bedsides, chatting. I now know this was a precious and principal time. I learned to build relationships centred on trust, or professional understanding and mutual respect. One patient on the haematology ward was having a bone marrow transplant. He was a few years older than me,married with a young child; I knew him on first name terms and I often paid him my last visit of the shift, late at night. I would sit at his bedside and we would chat, and usually about irrelevant things,and while absent his weeks in hospital. One evening, at a time when his blood count was returning and he was feeling less exhausted, and we talked about his wife,his child, his hopes for the future. He then turned to me and said, and in his Cockney accent: “I’ve made plans and if for any reason I don’t invent it,I’ve left a note for my wife in a book at home – just let her know”. I dismissed his pessimism; his recovery was nearly a done deal. Continue reading...
Source: theguardian.com