As a doctor you will be confronted with different writing tasks: grants, case reports, letters. But what if you don’t know how to write?
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I had classmates who studied medicine because they don’t like to write. Their writing skills were barely good enough to take a multiple choice test.. But what can you do to improve your writing skills?
Hey, I’m back!
You may have noticed that I took a short break and didn’t blog as much.
The reason for that was a change in my personal life you can read and see more about in my about section.
Great times…
When I implant a central venous catheter, the patient’s face is covered with drapings. Many patients who are conscious during this kind of intervention are very nervous. I can only imagine that it’s not much fun to have your face underneath a blanket, it’s 40°C, dark and you are waiting for some guy to put a needle in your neck. There are definitely things more fun to do, I imagine.
Shortly after I stopped yelling, swearing and cursing about my dislocated radius fracture (which took about 48 hours) I decided to get the best out of it: We don’t get many chances to get this change of perspective and see and feel how doctor’s work impacts the patient. So I decided to observe closely what I can learn from my colleagues and from the situation itself: The good, the bad an the ugly:
Hospitals have one great advantage over general companies. You don’t have to spend a whole lot of money hiring consultants to find out if you make a good job. You just have to be honest and ask yourself this one question: “Would you go there if you were sick?”
Since I started studying medicine I got to know numerous different work environments. I counted up to twenty different internships, hospitations and rotations, most of them lasting only a couple of weeks. They enable you to get to know different fields but also require you to integrate you fast, if you want to be taught something. If you want to learn something during your internship, you need a plan:
During my first clinical clerkship on a nephrology ward, we went on rounds and the chief resident attempted to explain to a patient why her kidneys didn’t work: “…your disease is of inflammatory origin.”
I thought: “What? Inflammatory…as opposed to…? I have no clue what he just said! OK I’m still a beginner. I have only studied two years of medicine, but odds are.. that’s more than the patient studied!”
Six years or more we spent to learn how to use the medical language. And it is important to use it when talking to colleagues to minimize risk of misunderstanding.
But to make sure that we are also understood by the patients, we have to learn a different skill: we have to switch from medical to nonmedical tongue.
So, how can we make sure, the patient understands us?
In the beginning of my career I thought I had more than enough to do with handling ONE patient. Having relatives around seemed to me like having additional “opponents”. They appeared like someone who has additional demands and wishes. Turns out I was wrong. The truth is that the patient’s relatives are our allies.
Ever since I started studying medicine I get several medical questions during every party.
Many people have a bad conscience, questioning me, because they think I don’t like to talk about medical issues in my free time.
But the truth is, it never bothered me to listen to their experiences. I can also profit from these conversations, because I get an unfiltered view of a patient and she can tell me what she liked and disliked about her doctor.
But what I`ve learned – mostly by trial and error – is that you have to obey certain rules. Otherwise you can get into big time trouble…
