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However, I try to suspend my judgment because I recognize that I'm often only seeing these children when they are at their worst. I also recognize that ultimately, the families and I both want what's best for their child, even if we may disagree about what that is. The families are doing the best they can in a heartbreaking and stressful situation, and I will be there to care for the child and the family the best I can, no matter the outcome.
There are several online threads with medical professionals opening up about the untold secrets of their jobs, and even unveiling some dark mysteries, so we selected several dozen truly interesting facts and stories.
From the little secrets of the medical profession and honest admissions that doctors don’t know everything about their job to dark medical mysteries and hilariously funny memoirs and tales — please feel free to read this selection of stories, made for you by Bored Panda!
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As a Physician Assistant, negative, I don't hold back. You wanna know something about your condition, I will give you the straight talk, even if you can't handle it. But I'm under the Doctor, and I follow their instructions like it's the army.
What does the average person, who doesn’t often end up in the hospital, really know about the work of doctors and nurses? Where do we get this knowledge and these facts? Most likely, it’s a variety of medical movies and TV series, from “ER” and “The Pitt” to “Scrubs” (yes, medical sitcoms can sometimes be incredibly meticulous with the facts!).
But no matter how accurate or realistic a series about everyday hospital life may be, it’s first and foremost entertainment. So, it’s quite possible that our selection of facts and stories today will dispel some misconceptions about doctors’ work or provide you with some useful knowledge.
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Working in elderly/palliative care I talk a lot about DNR/advance directives and I try to be very honest about outcomes, but I skip the gory details mentioned above….
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If they tell you the lab messed up, 99% of the time they (or the nurses) messed up.
"The lab lost your sample" is code for, I didn't label it fully or correctly, I requested the wrong tests, I used the wrong tube, I left it on the side and the nurses forgot about it for 5 hours, draw order was wrong, I didn't invert the sample and it clotted, I under filled the sample, I took the sample from a drip arm, I took the sample in the wrong tube and tried to switch it to another thinking the lab wouldn't notice, etc.
They know you don't want another draw, they also know you can't come into the lab and throw scream at us.
A significant portion of the stories told here concern various euphemisms and indirect formulations designed to achieve two main goals. The first is to reduce the trauma of communicating health conditions to patients and their families. The second, closely related, is a special “code language” used by medical professionals to convey information to colleagues in the presence of patients.
Basically, this is like the myth of the tooth fairy or Santa Claus (I do hope we’re not giving anyone any spoilers here) when communicating with kids. Because most patients are, in a way, also sort of kids when they arrive at the hospital. Adult kids, for whom medical professionals are responsible.
However, MDs are advised to avoid precisely such euphemisms when communicating with kids. “Children are more likely to be concrete thinkers and less likely to pick up on the nuances of a euphemism,” this dedicated study, published at Prime Scholars, says. And yet, a peculiar code language exists among medical professionals — and stories about it are also included in our collection.
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Many doctors, in one way or another, must also be good psychologists when communicating with patients or their loved ones. It’s generally accepted that clinicians should employ so-called “compassionate communication” as part of the treatment process.
For example, many researchers compile lists of “never words,” the use of which can worsen patients’ psychoemotional states. In a recent study published on the Mayo Clinic website, the authors note that despite progress in treating many diseases, including cancer, patient fear remains a significant factor.
“Because seriously ill patients and their families are understandably frightened, they ‘hang’ on every word their doctor says,” Medical Xpress says, quoting one of the study authors. “Serious illness is not only a matter of physical suffering, but also emotional suffering. Doctors’ behavior, including their verbal and nonverbal communication, can exacerbate or reduce emotional suffering.”
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Edit: I get it, half of you are incredibly unlucky patients who've only met bad/overworked mds and the other half are doctors who inexplicably are not familiar with the dangers of persisting hypocondria and consequently, defensive medicine. Cool.
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In any case, we sincerely hope that the stories and facts presented in this collection will not only be interesting but also useful for you. Anyway, now, when watching a medical series, you’ll probably better understand the characters’ motivations and words. And, well, just reading two and a half dozen interesting stories will also be quite captivating, right?
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- Sometimes surgeries or procedures are not offered to obese patients due to anesthesia risk and increased surgical complications itself. Or the procedure is delayed for alternative medical treatments first because the risk of procedure/surgery is so high so would rather try other methods first. In anatomy class back in med school, I remember that dissections were immensely harder even with slightly more adipose tissue. I am not a surgeon now but I can imagine why the surgical risk itself is higher (not even including healing, infection risk after, etc)
I can say that a loved one was gone of an infection and we could not undergo surgery to fix this infection because the surgeon deemed it was too high risk. What went unsaid was that, the main reason for the risk was obesity, and it would have been a different outcome otherwise. But there is no point in saying that last fact to a grieving family when it couldn't have been changed at that point anyway.
- Your blood pressure, diabetes, chronic joint pain including back pain which is so common, PCOS (hormonal imbalance), infections in skin folds, etc... all can be so much better with weight loss. The most effective treatment for diabetes is weight loss when compared to medications. But because weight loss is not easy and rather than wait years for that to work while living with diabetes, we need to start medications. There are so many conditions tied to obesity, and then there are sequelae of those conditions (diabetes causing kidney failure over years, nerve pain in the feet, frequent infections, etc) and it becomes crazy how obesity can spiral into all of this.
I am by no means perfect. A healthy lifestyle is hard. Weight loss is hard. But the immensity of how important it is is hard to get into in a short appointment time slot. Often times, people don't really want to hear it, it just sounds like nagging and everyone knows blah blah I should eat vegetables, I don't need my doctor to reiterate things I already know. I will be frank with the fact that I am still finishing up training (residency) so I am still trying to find the balance of not nagging but also being that reminder that it is important to check in on how you are fitting healthy habits into your life. Another thing I really struggle with is telling certain people (e.g. young women) that they need to lose weight because I don't want to offend. Being a young woman myself, I know that it is so heavily tied to self-esteem and if they don't bring it up, then I have a hard time just outright bringing it up.
Curious to hear opinions from the patient perspective.
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