accidental death

[popbirch]

Have any of you ever thought about what it would be like to work on a patient and because of something you did or mistake you made the patient dies? I'm sure that it happens, but it must be hard to deal with. I have the tendency to connect with people quickly and thus feel very responsible for my effects on them, even in non-serious situations. Does med school help you prepare for this stuff, or is sort of a trial by fire when it happens? I guess the sciece and academics of medicine are not that hard in my mind, its the emotional aspects that make me think that medicine will be a challenge. I can handle reading a book everyday all day, but telling someone's loved ones that they are dead because of something you did will be the biggest challenge.

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[Pewl]

Watch House and Scrubs. The way they address the topic is actually pretty sound. What we do in medicine is delay the inevitable, and we ARE only human and we will mess up and people will die. It's just an aspect of the field that we need to accept.

Other than that, I'm sure we will all get sensitized to such things one day. =P

 

[Dave_D]

I have at least a little. I realize it's going to happen. However I also realize you have to think "Well what are the other options?" The problem is that people sometimes have the idea "If you can't be perfect you shouldn't try." But that's a standard that is currently beyond our grasp. Really, what's the options? No doctors? I admit that's a bit of a strawman but you have to realize everything you do has positive and negative costs. It'd be nice to have no negative costs to your actions but I doubt I'll see that in my lifetime.(But it would certainly be sweet.) I prefer to think of it as "Do my efforts as a whole improve things so much that it's worth the trade-offs?" I see it as yes when it comes to medicine.(All I can do is try as best as I can so I create the most good, hurting the fewest, and realize that if I had decided not to enter the game that too is a choice that has consequences on the public.)