#41 True professionals

As a doctor, taking care of people is my job. Like all jobs, it can get repetitive and mundane. It’s easy to forget that it’s not mundane to the patient. When I’m talking about the same disease entity for the third time that day, to a brand new patient, I have to remember that it’s all new to her. I can’t rush through it; I can’t dismiss her concerns just because I’ve heard them all before. My attitude makes a difference in that patient’s care.

I work mostly in outpatient ophthalmology, but the same is true in inpatient care, or any type of medicine. If you are phoning it in, your patients will know.

The doctors and nurses in Las Vegas were amazing. They were not phoning it in. By the time my parents and I got there, Eric was essentially gone. Machines were breathing for him and medications were trying to keep his blood pressure up and his intracranial pressure down, but for all intents and purposes he wasn’t there anymore. It would have been easy for the staff at the hospital to treat him like another piece of furniture. They didn’t. He had one-to-one nursing care, the whole time he was there. For those of you who don’t know what that means, he had a dedicated nurse, in his room, all the time. She had no other patients. Her name was Marisol and she took care of us as much as she took care of him. Unfortunately, there wasn’t that much to do for him. She made sure we were as comfortable as we could be and found us a private place to make phone calls. She contacted doctors when we needed to speak to them. In this day of cutting back on medical expenditure I find it amazing and wonderful that the hospital dedicated her to us.

My brother’s neuro-surgeon, Dr. Blum, was also great. He performed heroic surgery trying to save Eric even knowing there wasn’t much chance. He explained this over the phone to both me and my parents separately. After surgery we spoke to him both on the phone and in person and he never rushed us, never shirked from answering a difficult question. Or answering it again.

Both of these professionals helped us to accept what was going on. I wrote them a thank you note when I was able, but that was inadequate to communicate how much their dedication meant to us. Eric was beyond their help, but they never made us feel that they begrudged us their time.

Eric was an organ donor so we had to keep him alive until the teams were ready to take his organs. We said goodbye to him in his room before they took him to the OR. Once they got him to the OR they disconnected the machines and let him officially die. After this happened the teams went to work. Marisol went with him to the OR and then came to the waiting room to let us know that he was really gone. She cried with us. That’s uncommon dedication.

I have worked with many wonderful and not so wonderful nurses and doctors. I now have a new appreciation for what the time that we put in means to our patients and their families. Although inside, my patience may be gone, I try never to show this. I try to give back what I got.