Tag: Doctors Patients and Diseases
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Healing beyond the sterile chamber
Brody FoglemanSpartanburg, South Carolina, United States A senior resident once shared with me: “Patients don’t heal in the hospital; they get sicker. Our goal is to stabilize, medically optimize, and discharge.” Though I was surprised by such a statement, it became truer the more patients I encountered as a medical student. A patient admitted, a…
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Endurance
Anthony Papagiannis Thessaloniki, Greece One of the things we learn in medicine, not from books but from the daily encounters with patients over the years, and which never stops pleasantly surprising us, is man’s endurance in all kinds of adversity and hardship, including serious health problems. No diagnostic test, biological marker or imaging modality, however…
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Physician associates and independent prescribers
JMS PearceHull, England A recent high-profile death in London has led to doctors’ concerns about medical associate professions.1,2 A thirty-year-old woman died from a pulmonary embolism after seeing a physician associate (PA). This led to the case being discussed widely in the media, on social media, and in Parliament by Barbara Keeley MP: Emily Chesterton…
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A Hispanic amulet against disease in infants
Edward TaborBethesda, Maryland, United States In my pediatric residency at a New York City hospital many years ago, I noticed that half of my Hispanic infant patients, as well as some toddlers, wore a small black and red amulet that their parents hoped would protect against disease. When I asked other residents and attending physicians…
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Synesthesia, empathy, and the “art” of medicine
Maeve PascoeCleveland, Ohio, United States “Do my name next!” people would exclaim as I tried to explain that I am not “doing” anything, I merely perceive things differently. Not many medical conditions double as parlor tricks, but the benign condition of synesthesia is unique in its ability to astonish. For much of my childhood, I…
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For debate: Presents from patients
Hugh Tunstall-PedoeDundee, Scotland It was Christmas Day in Guy’s Hospital, London. Two months into my first house-physician post, I was completing a morning round with the staff nurse on my female ward. At the far end of the open ward was a bed with closed curtains. A small face peered round them with increasing frequency…
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A brief history of ulcerative colitis
Parnita KesarSouth Carolina, United States The symptoms of ulcerative colitis have been documented since the eighteenth century. From 1745, there is evidence that Prince Charles, the Young Pretender to the English crown, had symptoms consistent with the condition we now know as ulcerative colitis. He treated these symptoms by adopting a milk-free diet.1 But the…
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Empathy or sympathy?
JMS PearceHull, England David Jeffrey’s splendid paper about emotions and empathy1 points out that Sir William Osler claimed that by excluding emotions, doctors gained a special objective insight into the patient’s suffering. But when Osler advised students that “insensibility is not only an advantage, but a positive necessity in the exercise of a calm judgment,”…
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“You will be alright”
Swetha KannanAjman, United Arab Emirates “Will my daughter be alright?” asked the anxious mother, trying to hold back her tears. A young girl in her early twenties, so petite and frail that her body seemed to be like a sole pearl in a large sea. Her worrisome eyes met mine, screaming the same question—“Will I…
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Wounded healer
Brandon MuncanStony Brook, New York Since Plato, the notion of a sufferer helping the suffering has been proposed as one of the more skillful ways of helping a patient through an illness.1 Although this concept has been discussed since the time of Athenian philosophy, the term “wounded healer” itself was only coined in 1951 by…