three minutes

All I've been writing about lately has been my shadowing experiences but here's another one.  If anyone has felt angry or even hurt by a doctor's insensitive attitude, I want to apologize on behalf and promise I will try my best not to be the same (when I finally become a doctor).

The other day, I shadowed a physician specializing in liver (and the surrounding organs).  One of the outpatients came to get the results of her test and it turned out she had some hepatitic virus in her blood and that her liver had some kind of inflamation.  The doctor wanted to do a biopsy and he needed the patient's consent.  But the patient's daughter asked most of the questions and the doctor's answers were blunt.  The patient just sat there with a worried face, not knowing what to do.  Amidst an awkward silence, the doctor started glancing through a chart of another patient while the patient in front of him thought about the options provided.  I totally understood how busy the doctor was -- he had so many patients waiting; the list went on forever.  His behavior may have been unavoidable for the greatest happiness of the greatest number.  But I could tell he was also in a bad mood (partly because his computer kept bringing up the wrong kanji).  And this is where things started going worse.

He leaned back in his chair, glanced at the patient, and told her that he himself had never caused hemorrhage that required transfusion but that he had seen a horrible case in the past when he had been a resident.  He laughed a bit, and the patient just nodded.  It's of course important to inform the patient of the risks but it's useless to stir up her anxiety with an accident that occurred thirty years ago.  Some doctors bring up so much statistics and even talk about cases of other patients under different conditions.  If the patient wants all that information, she will ask for it, or she could even look it up herself.  What's good about getting informed by a doctor, in my opinion, is that the doctor is not a computer; he becomes a human filter that picks up necessary information for the patient and provides it with consideration towards her feelings.  All she needs is a clear explanation of what the biopsy is for and how it will be done, and what the risks are in her case.  Not the next patient.  When I become a doctor, my duty will be to treat as many patients, but I still don't want to forget to focus on the patient I am seeing at that moment.

The same day, I happened to listen to an interview with Ed Sheeran, and he described how a brief exchange with another singer had changed his life.  It had only been three minutes for that other singer and it might've meant nothing, but it meant his life to Ed Sheeran.  That's why he thinks it's important that he always leaves his personal emotions backstage or in the car.  His fans are going to meet him only once for less than three minutes, and if he acts like a jerk, he might pluck a bud that otherwise would've bloomed as a great musician like himself.  Doctors don't change lives like that.  A liver biopsy being postponed for a week may not change a patient's prognosis.  But I think it's the same three minutes.  "Another three minutes" for a doctor means more than that to a patient.