Storytellers

Can I cry in front of my patients? Vijay Gopichandran A small but strong army of bloggers is forming in our institution and these bloggers are inspiring me to write more. Yesterday, one of our student bloggers wrote an emotional and reflective piece on the various instances when she was moved to tears by the pain, distress, and anguish of her patients. Read the blog here . When I read her reflective piece, I started wondering what I did during the moments I was moved to tears. I was also reflecting on various discussions I have had with batches of students on this topic. In fact, another student of our college did a study on Emotional Intelligence and published it. I am going to write briefly on what I have done when I have been emotionally affected by a clinical situation and its influence on the way the patient related and responded to me. I was pursuing my MD in Community Medicine at that time and had just lost my grandmother to a very severe form of pneumonia. I was ve...

Domestic violence – a social impediment to health These are stories of three women who came to my clinic over the past 10 years. They came to the clinic at different points in time, one almost 8 years ago, one who is visiting regularly since the past 5-6 years and one whom I saw today. Each has a very different story but linked by one common determinant, domestic violence. Sarasu, a 60-year-old lady who I saw today in the clinic, brought back memories of Roja and Amudha from the past. The violence that they experience in their lives reflected on their health and brought them in contact with me. From a fresh MD graduate ten years ago, who was naïve to the issue of domestic violence in the lives of women, to the primary care practitioner, who suspects domestic violence in my patients very frequently now, I have come a long way. I am narrating the stories of these three women who taught me to be aware of how much violence a woman must face in order to even exist in an oppressive an...

Nowadays who sees caste? I understand I am treading on a politically sensitive topic in this blog. I am using some words in this blog which may sound objectionable to some people, so I start by declaring that I mean no malice while using any of these words, and I am using them only because they stung my auditory sensitivities and I want to transfer that sting to you through these writings. “Doctor, I am guessing you are a brahmin”, said a patient as a closing remark during a conversation today. The words stung quite harshly. Read alone, there is nothing hurtful about the words that were uttered. Being someone born in a privileged community, being referred to by the caste name, should usually not incite this kind of response. But it did. To understand why I would like to narrate the incidents that led to this statement. It was a routine clinic day. However, the clinic was not too busy. After finishing the clinic early, my colleagues and I came to the doctor’s resting room to ...

Even today I find myself waking up from a dreadful nightmare filled with neurological pathways crisscrossing the spinal cord, the brain stem and then the brain and I stuck entwined between the crisscrossing fibers. That is how scared I am of neurological diagnosis and treatment. And in this story, I am going to narrate the events that made me a neurologist. I do not have a DM in neurology. I don’t even have an MD in General Medicine. In the rural area where I practice medicine, somehow word spread that I am a “narambu doctor” which is Tamizh for “nerve doctor” or neurologist. How did the word spread like that? What does this mean to me as a primary care provider, to primary care practice that is followed today and to the overall practice of medicine? Read along for some of my reflections. Gopal (name changed for confidentiality) was a 29-year-old man working as a construction supervisor in a large construction site. He suddenly developed weakness of his hands. First, it started as...

The dictionary defines intuition as “the ability to understand something without the need for conscious reasoning”. In this essay, I am writing about the ability of the clinician to understand something instinctively. I am narrating events of clinical encounters that I have been involved in, either directly or as an observer. From these events, I intend to draw out the concept of intuition in clinical medicine and to propose its implications for medical practice. Today was a particularly busy day in our clinic. My colleague, whom I will refer to as SD, and I started the clinic early in the morning and had very little respite through the day till about 3 PM when we could catch our breaths for a break. The hot weather and high humidity compounded the discomfort in the cramped space of the overcrowded clinic. When SD came with a case sheet to discuss a patient, I was half listening to her and half writing my own case sheet of the patient I was attending to. She said that there was ...