Recently, a picture of a young doctor kneeling down, appearing to cry on a sidewalk has gone viral on social media after it was posted by a close friend, an EMT, from his hospital. The EMT explained that the doctor in the picture was unable to save a 19-year-old patient. The image has touched many hearts, especially within the medical community, about the hardship of being on the health care front-line in an emergency department.
A recent article on Medscape discussed how emergency medicine physicians are not immune to traumatic events. Their daily experiencing events of violence, death, verbal assault and aggressiveness can potentially precipitate to post traumatic stress disorder.
I vividly recall my first experience dealing with loss of a patient. It was during my internal medicine (IM) rotation. I was the first person from the IM team to admit the patient. I was the patient's first person to greet and check on her well-being every morning. And when I was there to witness her reaction, or lack thereof, when she was told to ‘get her affairs in order' by her oncologist. I felt sick in my stomach. I felt empty. I felt powerless.
It took me a few months to let go of that uneasy feeling every time I passed by her room. I had to reassure myself that the patient was enjoying a great time, of what she had left, at home with her family before her aggressive stage IV lung cancer took over. But the feeling of ‘losing a patient,' of feeling powerless, never left me.
And reading about the recent news about the grieving moment by this young doctor, I could barely fathom how much pain he must be feeling.
**The original post appeared on Medscape "The Differential" on March 19, 2015.
A recent article on Medscape discussed how emergency medicine physicians are not immune to traumatic events. Their daily experiencing events of violence, death, verbal assault and aggressiveness can potentially precipitate to post traumatic stress disorder.
I vividly recall my first experience dealing with loss of a patient. It was during my internal medicine (IM) rotation. I was the first person from the IM team to admit the patient. I was the patient's first person to greet and check on her well-being every morning. And when I was there to witness her reaction, or lack thereof, when she was told to ‘get her affairs in order' by her oncologist. I felt sick in my stomach. I felt empty. I felt powerless.
It took me a few months to let go of that uneasy feeling every time I passed by her room. I had to reassure myself that the patient was enjoying a great time, of what she had left, at home with her family before her aggressive stage IV lung cancer took over. But the feeling of ‘losing a patient,' of feeling powerless, never left me.
And reading about the recent news about the grieving moment by this young doctor, I could barely fathom how much pain he must be feeling.
**The original post appeared on Medscape "The Differential" on March 19, 2015.