This issue includes an On Being a Doctor essay, titled
“Our Family Secrets,” that we think, and hope, will make readers' stomachs churn (1). In this essay, the author describes teaching a medical humanities course to senior medical students and asking, “Do any of you have someone to forgive from your clinical experiences?
Did anything ever happen that you need to forgive or perhaps still can't forgive?” One of the students— clearly distraught—recounts lacking the courage to object to a surgeon's highly disrespectful behavior to a patient under general anesthesia for a vaginal hysterectomy.
The author then recounts how he was an accomplice to the harrowing behavior of an obstetrician during a delivery complicated by uterine atony and hemorrhage. …show more content…
Saying nothing robs the perpetrator of an audience and, hopefully, extinguishes the incentive to continue the behavior. Or we might be the anesthesiologist in the essay and demand an end to the behavior and even chastise the perpetrators. Although we know of no empirical evidence about which response is most common, we speculate that it is silence and that there are too few
“anesthesiologists” among us. If the essay gives just one physician the courage to act like the anesthesiologist in this story, then it will be well worth publishing.
It is our hope that the essay will gnaw on the consciences of readers who may recall an instance of their own repugnant behavior. The story is an opportunity to see what this behavior looks like to others and starkly shows that it is anything but funny. After finishing it, readers guilty of previous offense will hopefully think twice before acting in a manner that demeans patients and makes trainees and colleagues squirm. Again, if the essay squelches such behavior even once, then it was well worth publishing.
Ambiguity magnifies the power of the essay. Is the author struggling to forgive the surgeon for his poor treatment of Mrs. Lopez, or is he struggling to
“Our Family Secrets,” that we think, and hope, will make readers' stomachs churn (1). In this essay, the author describes teaching a medical humanities course to senior medical students and asking, “Do any of you have someone to forgive from your clinical experiences?
Did anything ever happen that you need to forgive or perhaps still can't forgive?” One of the students— clearly distraught—recounts lacking the courage to object to a surgeon's highly disrespectful behavior to a patient under general anesthesia for a vaginal hysterectomy.
The author then recounts how he was an accomplice to the harrowing behavior of an obstetrician during a delivery complicated by uterine atony and hemorrhage. …show more content…
Saying nothing robs the perpetrator of an audience and, hopefully, extinguishes the incentive to continue the behavior. Or we might be the anesthesiologist in the essay and demand an end to the behavior and even chastise the perpetrators. Although we know of no empirical evidence about which response is most common, we speculate that it is silence and that there are too few
“anesthesiologists” among us. If the essay gives just one physician the courage to act like the anesthesiologist in this story, then it will be well worth publishing.
It is our hope that the essay will gnaw on the consciences of readers who may recall an instance of their own repugnant behavior. The story is an opportunity to see what this behavior looks like to others and starkly shows that it is anything but funny. After finishing it, readers guilty of previous offense will hopefully think twice before acting in a manner that demeans patients and makes trainees and colleagues squirm. Again, if the essay squelches such behavior even once, then it was well worth publishing.
Ambiguity magnifies the power of the essay. Is the author struggling to forgive the surgeon for his poor treatment of Mrs. Lopez, or is he struggling to