Tuesday, September 16, 2008

treating patients you dont like

I want to begin by saying that I believe that a parent has and should take on more responsibility to their child than any other individual should to another. On one of my recent placements, I had an interesting experience.
On this placement I was reading patients notes who I was preparing to see for the first time, I noticed he was an intravenous drug user (ie a hard drug user), as well as having kids and a wife, his condition was also life ending and a result of drug use. So anyways, I am already quite frustrated with this person, because in ICU earlier I heard the patient complaining to friends that his “lifestyle” is going to change drastically. And this is a negative thing why? Shouldn’t his lifestyle have changed when he had a child? As I thought about this fella more and more I was really quite angry at him, and really wasn’t too keen to help him, rather I was thinking to myself, really terrible things like the docs shouldn’t have even bothered to waste their time and tax payers money on this guys life prolonging surgery. So in turn, I wasn’t really too keen on treating him, because I really thought he “sucked”.
After spending some time with this guy over the coming weeks, I stopped been so angry at him. I even spoke to him about his daughter. And he was so proud and delighted with her. But too this day I still can’t accept his decision to use drugs and ultimately kill himself with them, whilst his daughter is still a young child. I guess its impossible to understand why humans do many things. I eventually realized or at least am realizing that it’s not a physios role to judge people. It is purely our duty to do our job the best way we know how.
The main lesson I guess this situation taught me, was that even if I really feel strongly about something or someone, it is still my duty to treat every patient equally as well as the next and to the best of my abilities. And I know now that I am more than likely going to be able to treat those patients who I feel are bad people and really think the way they live their life is disgraceful. Finally I guess I’m realizing that we can never truly know anything when it comes to a person’s mind sets, and to believe our opinion is right, is being proud and self righteous.

1 comment:

Isabella said...

I think one of the best things about working as a physio (or other health professional) is that there is no room for judgement or discrimination in our job. When it comes to illness and health we are all equal.