From a young age, we knew that doctors saved lives. As pre-meds, we were able to shadow physicians and appreciate how they used their knowledge to cure disease. During the pre-clinical years, we dove deep into the medical literature to recognize pathologies so we could formulate a plan to return patients to their normal physiology. In the clinical years, we spent thousands of hours on wards to practice our craft and polish concepts under the guidance of seasoned attendings, residents, and nurses.
Finally, we're doctors. We know that residency brings a brand new role and set of responsibilities. Even though we've been hoping and working hard for this moment for years, I didn't fully realize the depth and gravity of influence we have as physicians until I started residency.
The title "doctor" carries a degree of respect and honor that patients look forward to hearing. Although I rounded on patients as a medical student, I didn't realize how much it truly meant to the patient to see the doctor in the hospital every morning until I became Dr. Rahman, myself. Even if we are only able to spend 10 to 15 minutes at the bedside, it truly means the world to some patients because they wait all day and night just for an opportunity to talk to their doctor.
After being in the hospital for a month with chronic disease, a patient told me on her discharge day, "Speaking with the doctor is my hope for the day, just knowing that someone is making a plan for me with the blessings of God is enough to give me the strength to make it through the day even when I feel really sick." Another patient who was deciding if she should amputate her leg and say goodbye to it forever said, "Your explanations help me make decisions. Without them I would be in fear ... no, I would be terrified to death. Your mannerisms, experience, calmness, and presence as the doctor builds my confidence that my treatments and decisions are the right ones. It's scary being in the hospital with unfamiliar faces always walking through my room, but I trust you because you're my doctor and I know you have my best interest in mind even if I don't know what it should be."
These are the relationships that we are blessed to build as physicians, these are the moments that we have been waiting for our whole lives -- the ability and responsibility to make tangible differences in our patients' lives, every single day. Moreover, with the demands of being a physician and the seemingly endless tasks competing for our attention, the sacredness and importance of our duty to build relationships with our patients can become just another box we need to check on our daily to-do list.
However, what we sometimes fail to realize is that all the calls we take, consults we make, images we order, labs we follow up on, family members we inform, notes we write, peer-to-peers we partake in, and hardships we are willing to undergo all lead up to the most important fidelity of our profession: building relationships with our patients.
We let our expertise in disease identification, management, and treatment become the focus of our days, and we get lost in the trees of appreciating interesting pathology instead of focusing on the bigger picture of the whole forest -- appreciating our patients while healing their fears, doubts, and worries.
This is a reminder to myself and other physicians that we are extraordinarily lucky and blessed to be among the relatively few people in human history to have been selected to be healers. It is an honor to spend time with our patients -- that is what our work days are planned around. More important than the disease, is the person. We must always keep that in mind.
is a resident physician at the University of Toledo College of Medicine and an incoming Physical Medicine and Rehabilitation resident at the University of Missouri School of Medicine.