🤝 A Patient Thanked Me Today and It Meant A lot.

14th of May 2020

I’ve been working as a doctor now for just about three years and last week I received two words that really affected me.

I had just finished a ten-hour shift at the hospital and was driving home. My brain kept going back to that patient I saw at the start of my day. That day I had seen seven new admissions, four inpatients, performed several patient reviews and yet this particular patient stood out.

He said thank you.

Now I don’t doubt that the other patients also said thank you; mostly every patient I meet is extremely grateful and it truly is a pleasure to treat them. This patient’s thank you stood out and as of the moment I’m writing this I’m unsure why.

As with every experience, reflection is the way to make sense of it and learn something new about yourself.

I’ve broken down the experience into three main parts; the patient’s condition, the patient and lastly me.

The Condition

To give you some context I’ll outline this patient’s presentation. He presented with multiple symptoms that had been causing him grief over the past few months. He had been to visit his GP, family medicine doctor, who sent him off for some bloods. The bloods were largely inconclusive and so he soldiered on, bearing the brunt of these symptoms for two further months before seeking further help.

Enter Mohammad.

Having received the letter from the GP, I ordered a number of investigations recommended by the GP and a few of my own. The results of said investigations came back with a clear answer for this man’s symptoms. I presented the diagnosis to the patient and explained the initial steps in management as recommended by the specialist team I had consulted. I explained the side effects of the medication, which symptoms to look out for and when to return to hospital. All extremely standard care, that any other doctor would be more than capable of providing.

I had treated thousands of patients by this point in my career and although I recognise symptoms are subjective - this presentation certainly did not rank very highly in the memorable presentations list of my relatively scientific brain.

So why then did his thank you stand out so much?

The Patient

This patient was late middle aged; approaching retirement age in fact. He possessed an extremely friendly affect and was very polite.

Could the delivery of the thank you be the real reason behind its emotive effect?

This man’s delivery was direct, he used short sentences and effective pauses. Or was it his non-verbal communication; his open posture, proximity of his stance and his maintenance of eye contact.

My GCSE English teacher would be very impressed with my analysis

Me

Lastly, I too was involved in this interaction.

A stimulus can only be picked up if there is something to receive that information. I must have been in a particular mindset to have picked up all the cues discussed above. It has been a strange time for doctors, patients and the entire nation alike.

I had been feeling demotivated at work for a number of reasons and I guess I’ve only just recognised that. Perhaps, I was in need of some positivity.

It did make me feel a lot better.

Take home

I have definitely over-analysed this interaction, but I don’t think that it was necessarily a bad idea. Our lives are consciously and subconsciously shaped by the hundreds of interactions we have on a daily basis.

The only way we can truly process and learn from these moments is through the process of introspection.