A Letter To Medical Professionals

Dear Medical Professional,
How's it going? My hope is that you're well- rested, fulfilled, happy and loving your life of practicing medicine. If you're not, I'm sorry and I feel you, I really, truly do.
Can you remember a time when you decided to go into medicine and the healthcare world to serve and take care of people? Maybe it was when you were a kid and you thought your pediatrician was the coolest because he had a waiting room full of toys or some really fun way of making you feel not so scared about going to the doctor. Or perhaps it was during Biology class as you learned about all the cool biological systems and how they work together in harmony to make our bodies run efficiently. How about after you volunteered for a mission trip where you were assigned to take care of an asthmatic child using a make-shift nebulizer machine and you saw him breathe without struggle? Whatever it was, take a minute, close your eyes and think back to that moment. Can you feel the joy well up inside of you?
It may be hard to do, I get it. In modern day sickcare, we have little time to make any connections that remind us of why we went into medicine in the first place. The five to seven minute visits with patients where we are expected to review history, current concerns, review labs and x-rays, titrate or start medications, perform an exam and still maintain a rapport with our patients, make it difficult. We're constantly bombarded with paperwork or messages or insurance documents, medication refills, prior authorizations and making sure all of our notes are completed and submitted so that our hospitals and organizations and our staff can get paid. Most of us have a 40-hour work week salary, but often work 10, 11, up to 12 hours a day, 5 days a week, I know my supervising physician does. Very little in todays practice feels like medicine the way we dreamed of it being practiced. To me, it feels like conveyer belt factory medicine and I'm pretty sure my patients feel the same way.
Can you remember a patient who changed the way you approached your practice? Is there someone from rotations or residency or your first few years of practice who really impacted the way that you formed your bedside manner? For me, it was gentleman from my Internal Medicine rotation in Phoenix who came in for a physical and left with what I thought was a massive cancer in his abdomen. He was 45 years old and had not been to a doctor in a couple of decades. His wife forced him to finally make a visit because he was losing so much weight. I knew what he had. I ran to my supervising physician to share the case and deliver my findings and diagnosis. He went in and very sensitively and tenderly explained what we had found and the steps that would need to be taken. Dr. W knew how words and delivery could detrimentally affect the outcome of someones health. When your doctor tells you something like "you have cancer" or "you have HIV", there is a hypercatecholamine and cortisol release that make you all kinds of crazy, suppress your immune system, create havoc in your body and mind usually unnecessarily.
This recently happened to my momma. My father was diagnosed with CLL and had to get a bone marrow biopsy. When my mom went to pick up the results to take to his regular doctor, she read "Multiple Myeloma/HIV/CLL". To read this about your Alzheimers diseased husband was alarming to say the least. She knew it wasn't true, but for a few moments her heart stopped, her body froze and she was lost. When she returned to talk to the physician, he brushed it off with "Oh, your husband is in his 70's, no one will ever believe he has HIV" or "the writing is too small for you to read anyway". This is not only inaccurate, but incredibly condescending and totally insensitive. What happened to the humanity in this guy? The empathy and ability to put yourself in your patient shoes and think "what if this was my wife's pathology report I was getting?"
So this letter is a plea. A request for you to dig deep and find that healer that wanted so badly to go into medicine for the right reasons and not for the prestige or the money. That stuff doesn't go to the grave with you. Maya Angelou said "People will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel".
If this sickcare system is going to get any better any time soon, we have to imbue our everyday interactions with love, compassion, empathy and emotional intelligence. We have the medical knowledge, we know the textbook medicine, if you've graduated and are practicing, this is a given. The most imperative piece of the puzzle is the part you can't teach, the treating your patient the way you would want to be treated. The golden rule applies here too folks.
My other recommendation is to return to your passions and your hobbies. According to God's Hotel, by Dr. Victoria Sweet, doctors in the Middle Ages weren't just doctors, they were doctors and professors, doctors and farmers, doctors and herbalists, doctors and barbers. How cool is this? People have made fun of me, administrators have questioned my dedication because I don't work full-time. My patients would argue differently and say they've never met a provider as dedicated as me, (thank you Mr. Wright). See if you can find a way to adjust your schedule to explore your passions outside of medicine, that way you won't get burnt out in seven years like I did and you can give your patients 110% when you are in their presence.
We are blessed with peoples lives everyday. Patients trust us with their most treasured commodity, their health. Be grateful that you get to touch peoples lives on so many different levels and use this as an opportunity to teach, empower and educate them so maybe they won't need us as much next time.
Thank you for your reading. I hope you can reignite that spark that led you to this profession in the first place. My momma, your patients and I will thank you if you can allow it to catch fire once again.

Sincerely,

Erica Benedicto, PA-C

Happy Fathers Day Pops!

Today is Fathers Day and I called my daddy this morning just as he was groggily waking from his slumber. Like a well-prepared actor he called me sweetheart throughout our conversation, our very short conversation that consisted of him answering yes or no questions. We said our goodbyes and I hung up the phone.  A few minutes later my momma called me back and said that she had just thought of something. I asked her what that was and as I could her her voice thicken and tears welling up, she said "You know, out of everyone in our family, your sister, nieces and nephew, me, your tia, you're the only one who has had a dad, a real dad". My momma doesn't cry often and I could tell she was way out of her comfort zone, so she said her piece and abruptly said "I love you, bye" and before I could respond, I heard the dial tone.
She was right and though my father no longer knows me of today, somewhere deep in his mind, the second he hears my voice, he realizes that his 'sunshine', his sweetheart is there. I thought about this as I went to my last day of Yoga Teacher Training, the day of our graduation. I knew that it would be an emotional day, so I guess my mom prepared me by loosening up the tear ducts. As I sat with those words from my mother, I thought of the tragedy once again.  The world has lost a great man. If my dad was well and of sound mind today, he would be a rock star of a yoga teacher. He was always physically active, my whole childhood, we would either go see him play volleyball, basketball, softball or baseball.  He loved to teach and even adopted Cathy, one of my first friends in El Paso, to play volleyball and taught her everything he knew. He was so proud of her and her talents just as much as he was of me in gymnastics. That's the kind of generous man he was.  My dad was always the teams' favorite guy, so energetic and such a team player, he loved people as much as I do, believing everyone had a special gift to bring to the planet. He was always so fair and all-encompassing and no matter how crummy a player you were, he always tried to make you feel like the MVP. Life was always fun when my dad was around, get-togethers were livelier, his workplace more tolerable, the games more equitable and our home was always a dance party. He told me about going to college on a wrestling scholarship in Missouri and how he was the only dark-skinned dude on the team. For a Puerto-Rican/Filipino man to move to middle-America in the 1960's to join a college team and fit in so beautifully was a testament to his charisma and dynamism. He was so popular in fact, he was rushed by multiple fraternities who wanted a piece of the rock star. They held him highly to say the least.
I guess in looking towards the past and the way things were, it always seems more sunshiny than it may have been, but I'm ok with this nostalgia, for me, my dad was the best daddy in the world.
So today is a special day for me in so many ways. A year ago today, I left Santiago for Paris after completing a 500 km trek through the Camino de Santiago and had a life-changing transformation. Today I graduated from a program that has completely altered my approach to life and people and has also transformed my spirit. I cried and talked about my feelings and experience, completely disarmed, without apologies and all my yogini sisters accepted me anyway. You ladies are truly perfect creatures. And it's a day I get to pay homage to the man who modeled a zest for life and people that I hope I can carry on throughout my practice, relationships, work, and life. Thanks for all the memories dad, the cheesy jokes, the hard lessons, the dance instructions and for just being the coolest dude in the world. I love you pops.