Empathy in medicine
I was watching a video on YouTube when an ad popped in.It was a promotional ad to donate to an animal welfare foundation but the ad really shocked me to the core. The ad started by showing two medical students throwing an innocent dog from the terrace of their dorms (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=55DsLurFrnI) and I was left wondering, about how there is a significant decline in empathy among medical students and professionals.
“They say death is hardest on the living. It’s tough to actually say goodbye. Sometimes it’s impossible. You never really stop feeling the loss. It’s what makes things so bittersweet. We leave little bits of ourselves behind, little reminders. A lifetime of memories, photos, trinkets. Things to remember us by even when we’re gone.”
Encounter with this ad, I had this flashback to the time my grandfather passed away, the doctor immediately said “Please take the dead body out now” and didn’t even give us 5 minutes to mourn,we were told over and over to leave the room. I was totally traumatized thinking how quickly the doctor dehumanized my grandfather and merely recognized his importance. My grandfather became just a number to him, he didn’t consider him as someone’s father,someone’s husband but rather just a dead body.I get the fact that doctors deal with death day in and out and this subject which is such a complicated subject for us has become mundane for them but still when a doctor is given a task to tell someone that their loved one has died,it is not just a list of bullet points that they have to memorize and tell it, it is so much more than that. Yours is the face, they will remember for the rest of their lives, they were living their lives as it is,picking their children from school,they made dinner and even if someone close to them is really sick they did not expect the worst outcome because hope is the one thing that keeps us alive, no it is not oxygen, it is not love but hope,a dying person hoping to live will find ways to do so, if he has hope.A doctor has the responsibility to deliver the worst news of one’s entire live, delivering the news you are changing their lives. In a moment that person is going from wife to widow,son to orphan and only person they look up to in that moment is a doctor.They are not an inconvenience,they are not a box on a list to be checked off, you are a part of their life now, your words,your face they are going to remember how you treated them for the rest of their lives, so empathy is a very important skill you need in that situation and recognize the importance of your role and respect the fact that, that person’s pain is the biggest thing in the room.
I don’t know watching those two students had a real impact on me, how is it that a person’s emotional intelligence is not measured when they study to be a doctor? How do just scoring good marks and getting a little ahead in this rat race make you eligible to pursue this noble profession?I have no rights to talk about all this,I am not an expert but just an ordinary girl, having a bad day who can just think and try to express myself sometimes by writing
