Week Five

Hey everyone!

I hope all of you had a great week! At the beginning of my week, I attended the "Film and Medicine Series: Being Mortal" at UofA's downtown campus. During the session, we watched a documentary adaptation of Atul Gawande's Being Mortal, which is easily the most well-known book in the medical world. (Which is also why I read the book twice to try and level up to the physicians and doctoral professors on campus) At the completion of the documentary, the auditorium was opened up to a Socratic Seminar on physician experiences related to those discussed in the documentary as well as advice for practicing medical students on humanistic approaches to patient care.

For me, the big takeaway from the Film and Medicine Series was that, in the paradox of medicine being both extraordinary and less than ordinary, you can't always count on the doctor to lead the way, sometimes the patient has to do it. Gawande detailed a series of questions that allows the patient to take the lead and, as a result, feel more valued throughout their care. Although this documentary focused on more long-term relationships with cancer patients, these individualized questions allow patients to use the clinical environment for emotional and physical therapy. To give you a more concrete idea of this, here are the four major questions:

1. As a patient, what do you think of your illness? What do you think it is and what do you feel will be its effects?
2. What are your priorities and goals for these last months of your life?
3. What are you worries? What are your fears?
4. What are you willing to sacrifice and what are you not?

I later shadowed an urgent care pediatrician, where I observed patient doctor relationships and attempts, or lack thereof, of an empathetic approach to medicine. After meeting with patients suffering from conjunctivitis, a reaction to a spider bite, an ear infection, and strep throat, I noticed that because it was in an urgent care setting, there wasn't any interaction besides discussing a quick fix from a prescription. Each clinical visit was about 5 minutes and, although the tone of the doctor was very warm and amicable, no one was taking the time to understand where the patient was coming from and what exactly the patient or parents were dealing with. I think this was a really important learning experience for me because in order for me to know what narrative medicine, it's vital for me to know what it is not. This way I can build a foundation of humanism in medicine off of this differentiation.

Thank you for reading and check back in next week!

Anivarya