Patients Are People to Be Helped, Not Conditions to Be Treated

When I was trying to figure out where to attend medical school, someone I sought advice from told me, “Almost nobody asks where I did my medical school training. I could have almost done the first two years in the library by myself!” It distressed me that I could, in theory, attend a top school and still spend half of my time there studying in a library. Dell Medical School at the University of Texas at Austin, described in a recent Commentary for Academic Medicine, had a different value proposition. The school purposefully structured the curriculum so that I couldn’t be stuck in a library for the first two years of my training. Even when I was learning the basic sciences, the teaching faculty structured classes so that I had to collaborate with my peers and hear from real patients. As a result, I learned about the art of caring. I distinctly remember one large group interactive session (our term for “lecture”) that demonstrated the importance of the art of caring. We were learning about aphasias—or difficulties in language that can result from strokes—in patients who had suffered strokes to different parts of their brains. Instead of using a PowerPoint with embedded videos, a neurologist brought in several of his stroke patients and interviewed them in front of the entire class. At the time, I was uncomfortable because I was at the beginning of my training and hadn’t yet met any real patients. I was surprised that the patients seemed comfortable with the expe...
Source: Academic Medicine Blog - Category: Universities & Medical Training Authors: Tags: Featured Trainee Perspective bedside manner medical education patient care physician-patient relationship Source Type: blogs