CT Scans and I-Spy

This ring has shown me all the ways that I can positively affect patient care. My primary concern with medical school is learning how to assess, diagnose, and treat medical conditions. But I’ve also found ways to make myself useful to the team, and to my patients, in less medicine-focused ways. I’ve opened myself up to the needs of the patient, whatever they may be, and found ways to make their journey a bit more manageable. I think that this willingness has made me a more compassionate care provider and will allow me to excel as part of the care team in residency.

One of my more memorable interactions was with a patient on my general medicine rotation. She was frustrated with the slow progress of diagnosing her condition, and was also struggling with new-onset memory loss. Every day she asked the team what the plan was, since she typically had forgotten it, and I took it upon myself to sit with her every afternoon to review the plan of care and answer questions. We reviewed her upcoming appointments, and I was able to pare them down to only the essentials since she had expressed concern about being able to drive to all of them. We discussed her ability to return to work and she opened up about her fears of losing her cognitive abilities and becoming less independent. By the end of her stay, we had spent nearly two weeks together, and she expressed her gratitude for my effort to my attending. I had been having some self-doubt about my ability to handle the complex medical needs of the patients on our service, but that kind of feedback really validated my effort, and I felt proud of the relationship we had established. I did very little for her actual medical condition (since there was not much to be done at that time), but I know that I assuaged some of her fears and was a friendly face amidst a lot of turmoil in her life.

My other favorite patient interaction didn’t directly involve patients, but I think it did make a difference to medical care on the service. My attending had a snafu with childcare and had to bring her child to the hospital during rounds one day. Our service was slammed with patients, and we had very limited time to see everyone. The attending was trying to run the rounds and take care of her child, but the demands of the day were clearly taking a toll on our ability to get things done. I finished my presentation and then told my attending I could take charge of her child for the day while rounds were happening. When I was done doing my cardiopulmonary exam, I gave her my stethoscope and showed her how to listen to a heartbeat. We played I-Spy and she stumped me with the red light on the back of the emergency exit sign. After writing my note, we drew pictures of a hospital and made up stories about the people inside. We found some gloves and blew them up to make turkeys that we carried around for the rest of the day. Rounds went off without a hitch, and my attending was very appreciative of the fact that she could focus on work for awhile. I’m proud of the fact that I identified something that I could help out with, was able to balance that with my clinical duties, and helped everything proceed more smoothly (and still found time to get pimped on some CT scans while she was coloring).

Drawings with my new friend