I became a doctor largely because I wanted to understand my body and what was happening to it, and because I wanted to be able to explain the physiology behind people's suffering better than my doctors did to me.
I am having a patient experience. I know I'm being vague on the internet right now, & I'm sorry, but my body is misbehaving, and all the training, education, and support I have does not solve my problem, or even name my problem. I do not know what is going on, and I can't fix it.
I am frustrated. I am tired. And I know the world is on fire and everything is terrible, and here I am whining about something that is very small in the grand scheme of things, but I just...I don't want to have to deal with this.
And nobody can fix it, or at least not yet.
I don't really know why I'm tweeting about this, but I guess: healthcare workers, remember you are not invincible, remember to take your patients seriously, and try to help them understand. It sucks to be on the other side.
Also, please please please be especially kind and mindful when a workup doesn't show what you expect it to. Nobody wants to hear how good their test results look and be reminded how normal they are when they feel anything but.
• • •
Missing some Tweet in this thread? You can try to
force a refresh
Learner: The patient rates her pain an 8/10, but I think it's really more a 4/10.
Me: How do you know?
Learner: Well, she's happy and interactive.
Me:
Pain is an intrinsically subjective experience and we cannot necessarily infer things about people's pain level based on their apparent behaviors, especially when we are meeting the patient for the first time and have no idea what their baseline looks like!
Now, I think I've said before on here that I do not love numerical pain scales because I don't find them particularly clinically useful, but if you like a scale, I personally prefer functional impact scales. These are widely available and many are well validated.
All right, I'm gonna level with you. This is going to be unpopular (especially with med school faculty/admin), but please know I'm speaking from experience here. Maybe this isn't universal, but here we go.
Med students heading into #Match2022 (or any match in subsequent years), please know that any and all advice from your med school administration is specifically designed to make sure *your school* is successful. They want you to match, period.
Your school does not need to worry about whether you are happy when/where/in what you match, as long as you match. You are a metric. You *not* matching is an unacceptable outcome not because it would be personally devastating to you, but because then they have to explain it.