Without the White Coat
Dealing with the dying in the medical residency training
How can one avoid thinking of the patient as a diseased organ system or as a "room number" in the hospital and instead consider him or her as a 'human being'?
DEATH is a topic that a lot of us will try to shy away from, but for a training medical resident, it is one that needs to be faced.
It's when patients arrive dead or when they have terminal cases like cancer or some debilitating disease.
Looking at some medical training programs in the city, I cannot recall one that addresses a dying patient or those that will counsel the family of an impending death.
It is hard for a patient to accept one's serious disease, thus it would depend on the doctor on how to reveal the news to him or her. After such revelation, the patient will experience anger, denial and depression before acceptance.
With the entrance of hospice care in some residency training programs, humanity is given to patients with cancer or who are terminally ill.
The training program deals with all diseases that affect a person and his organs and the treatment that's necessary. Most of the time, the person is being viewed as a "diseased" organ.
So, amid the new technologies in the diagnosis of diseases, how can a training resident physician treat a patient as a human being? How can one avoid thinking of the patient as a diseased organ system or as a "room number" in the hospital?
As head of societies and academies that will finally accredit medical residents and their training programs, let me reiterate that mentors should teach students to provide "human touch" in the their practice of medicine.
We need to remember that what we have achieved in the training programs is a reflection of ourselves.
As physicians, we should not only promise cure to the patient's disease but to also give them what's important ... care.