An interesting article that I found on MedScape that may interest everyone

[Guest guest]

Hi everyone,

I found an article on MedScape that you all may find very

interesting that has to do with Med Students. I wish that the

drs that have not been kind to us could read this and take the

classes given. Any way here's the article (yes I copied and

pasted it here b/c I know that not everyone is a member of

MedScape):

In Focus

Developing Empathy in Future Physicians

Vijay Aswani, PhD

[Medscape Med Students, 2001. © 2001 Medscape, Inc.]

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Introduction

One has only to read memoirs of recent medical graduates, such

as Melvin Konner's Becoming a Doctor,[1] Shem 's House of

God,[2] and Marrion's Learning to Play God,[3] to marvel

at the anecdotes and stories of tired interns and residents to

whom patients become nameless, faceless obstacles or

interruptions of much-desired sleep. This, coupled with

patients' fear that when they are most vulnerable they will be

in the hands of an albeit competent but callous physician, has

led to increased focus on the issue of empathy in the medical

profession.

School Ties

Some of the factors that seem to drive empathy to a low point in

physicians-in-training result from 2 traditional views doctors

absorb during medical school. One is the " care:cure dilemma. "

This usually asserts that it is doctors who do the curing and

nurses who do the caring. The other is the traditional format of

interviewing and the social ethos of medical training and

medical practice, which stress clinical detachment.

Indeed, Nisker[4] humorously refers to medical education as the

Yellow Brick Road, where " from the time the medical school's

acceptance letter is opened, students set off in pursuit of the

attributes of the good physician: intelligence, compassion and

courage. " Nisker adds:

The students already possess these traits, just as the

Scarecrow, Tin Man and Lion did before they set out for Oz, but

they may dissolve in education systems that still decree that

the initiation to medicine involve tons of tutored words and

consuming call schedules.

The rigors of medical school can take other tolls. Factors that

can drain a doctor-hopeful include:

Overexhaustion

Insufficient skills to deal emotionally

Organizational demands or limitations

Lack of example or correction of behavior

Scientists who have studied the transformation in medical

students during their clerkships tell us that in a psychological

attempt to deal with first encounters of illness, death, pain,

and suffering, students may swing from empathy to

overidentification, or objectivity to avoidance. Those who study

the problem call for a vertical support structure for coping

with the emotional demands and reactions to what one sees and

hears in the hospital. Spiro[5] puts it eloquently when he

speaks of the need for " conversations about experiences,

discussions of patients and their human stories, more leisure

and unstructured contemplation of the humanities. Physicians

need rhetoric as much as knowledge, and they need stories as

much as journals if they are to be more empathetic than

computers. "

Re-education

A number of investigators have suggested that reading medical

prose or good literature on death, sickness, dying, and the

doctor-patient relationship can help one to sort out one's own

feelings. An excellent Web site in this regard that I can

recommend is http://www.medicalprose.com/. Another useful idea

is to rent a video after exams that relates to a class you took.

For example, in our biochemistry class, after studying the lipid

disorders, we watched the movie Lorenzo's Oil (see

http://www.teachwithmovies.org/guides/lorenzos-oil.html for a

summary of the film and some ideas on using it in your classes).

It was heartening to see tears in the eyes of several future

doctors as they watched the parents and child fight the disease.

It brought new feelings to the bland text and equation

descriptions of the disease in our biochemistry book.

Finally, in some residency programs, first-day residents are

assigned a clinical scenario to act out and are instructed to

pose as patients and approach their department. The nurses at

the triage usually do not know who they are and they get treated

just as any other patient would who is visiting the department.

For most of them, it is an eye-opening experience.

Call to Compassion

Patients in pain, suffering, and illness seek relief from

medicine and the healthcare system, but they also seek human

comfort, understanding, and empathy. Most of the measures can be

easily assimilated into the structure of most medical schools.

In all fairness to the overworked, sleep-starved drones of the

medical world -- the interns and residents -- they are there

when you need them. Their compassion is spoken with action and

response to call. As Spiro has so eloquently stated, " Computed

tomographic scans offer no compassion and magnetic resonance

imaging has no human face. Only men and women are capable of

empathy. " [6]

Factors shown to enhance empathy in medical students and future

physicians include:

A liberal and humanistic education

Exposure to literature and philosophy

Training in interpersonal communication skills

Workshops on attentive listening, sensitivity, and empathy

Early and continued exposure to the hospital environment and

patients

Experience as a patient -- real or simulated "

I hope that this is helpful to everyone.

=====

Kristy

http://www.geocities.com/sokokl/kristyspersonalpage.html

Hoping to be a nurse soon but for now just a Medical Secretary who does a lot of

learning from reading on the Net, books, my dr(s), as well as sharing my own

personal experiences.

__________________________________________________

[Guest guest]

Thanks Kristy, Yes there are a few i would like to send back to school !!! Myself, I always have thought that the med students have had to put in too many hours at one time !!! Wouldn't you get cranky on so little sleep, then expected to be cheerful??? I sure would, plus I think it affects there ability to do a good job !!! Just my opinion... Thanks for coping it as I can never get into medscape...

{{{ Holiday Hugs }}}

Helen

Hi everyone,

I found an article on MedScape that you all may find very

interesting that has to do with Med Students. I wish that the

drs that have not been kind to us could read this and take the

classes given. Any way here's the article (yes I copied and

pasted it here b/c I know that not everyone is a member of

MedScape):

[Guest guest]

Helen,

Did you ever register to become a member? That's probably why

you couldn't get in. As other articles come that may be of

interest I will copy them for everyone.

=====

Kristy

http://www.geocities.com/sokokl/kristyspersonalpage.html

Hoping to be a nurse soon but for now just a Medical Secretary who does a lot of

learning from reading on the Net, books, my dr(s), as well as sharing my own

personal experiences.

__________________________________________________