DB'S MEDICAL RANTS

Internal medicine, American health care, and especially medical education

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Perhaps my last post on “great cases”

I appreciate the many comments on my two previous posts. One struck me

The outward display of emotion is not a reliable guage of one’s compassion. This is because doctors must compartmentalize intellect and emotion in order to be competent. Some physycians, stone cold on the surface, are the ones who go the extra mile for the patient. I’ve seen others, outwardly compassionate and “touchy feely” who never seem to be around when needed. Some doctors put on a better show than others, but such appearances can be deceiving.

This is a very interesting and cogent point, however, this is tangential to the point of the rant.

My concern is in how we as physicians talk to each other. If my words are accurate then as a teaching attending I convey important meanings to my trainees. We strive to teach professionalism in training (it is actually explicit in Internal Medicine training these days). One method for teaching professionalism is role modeling professionalism. To me that was the point of the resident’s post which started the entire discussion. When we forget to respect patients such as the one which started this discussion, then we have lost part of our professionalism (in my opinion). How we act at the bedside is an entirely different discussion which we may have another time.

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