- Joined
- Oct 14, 2003
- Messages
- 396
- Reaction score
- 0
I work at the Surgery front desk - clerical, scheduling, phones, charts, etc. Anyway, yesterday I was working the weekend shift and we only had one trauma case - a 40/50 yr-old man that had a tree (branch?) fall on him. He was rushed into ER then OR for emergency surgery.
His wife/girlfriend kept checking with me at the front desk to see how he is. I'd call back to the room but they were too busy to respond - the case was involving. About the third time she came up to ask, the doctors were already there at the front desk, and the main surgeon broke the news to her:
"I'm afraid I have some terrible news. We were not able to save him."
She just broke down crying on the floor (this happened right infront of me at the front desk), wailing "Oh God! He's gone! Gone! What am I gonna do?!"
I must say everytime I think of her reaction I feel terribly saddened and terrified because I keep thinking of being in her position. The denial of "no, this can't be happening" or the anger and fear going through her - it's truly sad to think about.
Mind you these kinds of cases happen all the time (not because of the lack of skill on the surgeon's part - just because death is a part of what we're going into). If he hadn't passed away at this hospital it could've been somewhere else. After giving the family their due time and attention, and after they saw the body and everything, it was simply a matter of moving on to the next case for the rest of the OR staff.
I was personally shocked - her reaction was enough for me, I didn't even need to be in the OR room when it happened. So how do you deal with this as a doctor? I bring this topic up to share and for discussion. I'm sure most of us have an idea of how we will react or would like to react to this.
As a friend of mine said, a part of you has to remain cold. It's not being insensitive, it's being composed to help your next patients. Death happens in this line of work - it comes with the territory. If we as doctors get emotional then we should just go become professional mourners.
I think what I just experienced first hand reaffirms some of my previous views on going into this career - it's equal parts excited and scared, even terrified. It's a good kind of scared though, a wise kind, the kind you may get from an adrenaline rush or the kind a child has when they're scared of parents punishing them should they do something disobedient. It's the kind that drives you to be better, and to learn and move on. I think for me personally this is very important to have as a physician, and I will always remember this experience as the first one I had where my reasons for going into medicine coincided with some of the harsh realities I will get to see in the field. But I wouldn't have it any other way. There's simply no career as dynamic and honorable as this one, but we have to be prepared for the hard times as well as the exciting times - we'd all be the better for it.
His wife/girlfriend kept checking with me at the front desk to see how he is. I'd call back to the room but they were too busy to respond - the case was involving. About the third time she came up to ask, the doctors were already there at the front desk, and the main surgeon broke the news to her:
"I'm afraid I have some terrible news. We were not able to save him."
She just broke down crying on the floor (this happened right infront of me at the front desk), wailing "Oh God! He's gone! Gone! What am I gonna do?!"
I must say everytime I think of her reaction I feel terribly saddened and terrified because I keep thinking of being in her position. The denial of "no, this can't be happening" or the anger and fear going through her - it's truly sad to think about.
Mind you these kinds of cases happen all the time (not because of the lack of skill on the surgeon's part - just because death is a part of what we're going into). If he hadn't passed away at this hospital it could've been somewhere else. After giving the family their due time and attention, and after they saw the body and everything, it was simply a matter of moving on to the next case for the rest of the OR staff.
I was personally shocked - her reaction was enough for me, I didn't even need to be in the OR room when it happened. So how do you deal with this as a doctor? I bring this topic up to share and for discussion. I'm sure most of us have an idea of how we will react or would like to react to this.
As a friend of mine said, a part of you has to remain cold. It's not being insensitive, it's being composed to help your next patients. Death happens in this line of work - it comes with the territory. If we as doctors get emotional then we should just go become professional mourners.
I think what I just experienced first hand reaffirms some of my previous views on going into this career - it's equal parts excited and scared, even terrified. It's a good kind of scared though, a wise kind, the kind you may get from an adrenaline rush or the kind a child has when they're scared of parents punishing them should they do something disobedient. It's the kind that drives you to be better, and to learn and move on. I think for me personally this is very important to have as a physician, and I will always remember this experience as the first one I had where my reasons for going into medicine coincided with some of the harsh realities I will get to see in the field. But I wouldn't have it any other way. There's simply no career as dynamic and honorable as this one, but we have to be prepared for the hard times as well as the exciting times - we'd all be the better for it.
