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It can be easy to lose your sense of perspective and purpose while working in the clinical environment. In fact, you may recognize this as a problem among many in the medical field. A few things to think about as you make your journey:
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Treat patients as you would want yourself, a family member, or other loved one to be cared for. This covers the technical aspects of healthcare as well as the quality and nature of your interpersonal interactions.
Try to avoid viewing the medical training process solely as a means to an end. As medical education is a lifelong undertaking, you’ve got to enjoy the journey. If not, stop and consider why.
Do the right thing. This applies to patient care and your dealings with colleagues and other healthcare workers. If something feels wrong, it probably is! This can be challenging, particularly when you are fatigued, stressed, in a subordinate position, or working with others who don’t have the same priorities.
Mistakes happen. You will likely contribute to errors during your careers. We are all human and thus all fallible. When errors occur, acknowledge them, report within your system so that underlying root causes can be identified and addressed, discuss with the appropriate parties, inform the patient, and make efforts to manage any consequences. Learn from what happened, while also remembering to forgive yourself. Being a doctor can be a humbling experience.
There is no substitute for being thorough in your efforts to care for your patients. Performing an appropriate exam and obtaining an accurate history take a certain amount of time, regardless of your level of experience, ability, or efficiency. In addition, get in the habit of checking the primary data yourself, obtaining copies of outside studies, mining old records for information, requestioning patients when the story is unclear, and in general being tenacious in your pursuit of clinically relevant material. This dogged search for answers is a cornerstone of good care.
Learn from your patients. In particular, those with chronic or unusual diseases will likely know more about their illnesses than you. Find out how their diagnosis was made, therapies that have worked or failed, disease progression, and reasons for frustration or gratitude with the healthcare system. Realize also that patients and their stories are frequently more interesting and revealing than the diseases that inhabit their bodies.
Become involved in all aspects of patient care. Look at the computed tomography (CT) images, talk with the radiologist, review the slides with the pathologist, watch the echocardiogram being performed. While you can’t do this for every patient, create space to make this happen on occasion. This will allow you to learn more and gain insight into a particular illness/disease state that would not be well conveyed by simply reading a report. It will also give you an appreciation for how tests are performed and their limitations.
Make it interpersonal. Find the consultant, nurse, or others involved in your patient’s care and talk ...