Today my Professor was asking us how we can be so happy when our patients lie sick on the bed. Then he started talking about empathy, but some topic came across and it was left in midway. But recently I have also felt that change in me. The change in thought process, the change in behaviour, the change in the way decisions are made, the change which crept in slowly over the long years of medical education and training.
I am talking about the empathy. Earlier during undergraduate days, I did not like to go and take cases of patients who are sick, because I shared their feeling and I had nothing to offer them other than kind and sweet words.
But now when I see a patient, first thing I want to find is, how is going to get benefit from my treatment. If he or she is not going to benefit, direct them to where they can get better advice or if they have a non curable disease, explain them and make them prepare for it. I don't find sharing their feelings and expressing them a necessity.
Marking a boundary for the empathy towards patient is so important. An extra emotional attachment to the patient often blinds the surgeon and makes him take decisions, consequences of which are not identified until it is late. For example he might take a decision to avoid a protective stoma over an anastomosis thinking of the morbidity of patient and ends up with a leaking anastomosis. Things, like delaying the insertion of a Ryle's tube in the hope that patient may recover from a post operative ileus, is very common in a surgical ward.
The epitome example of what I described here is the triage system. There is no point in decision making based on human emotions in medical field. The one who is going to benefit, should not miss the treatment.
