Listen and followApple PodcastsSpotifyYouTubeMore apps · Browse all episodes
“I will never forget these words. This physician validated my efforts to emotionally connect with patients. This message will indelibly shape the way I allow myself to care for and become invested in the patients to come in my future. Illness is often incredibly unfair, and sometimes we cannot overcome. However unbeatable a disease may be, a doctor can always remind a patient they are not going through this alone. We can be the one to hold their hand every day and stand with them until the very end. The magic of medicine sometimes lies in the brilliance of a treatment or cleverness of a diagnosis, but most often, it stems from the empathy of one heart opening itself to another.”
Claire Brown is a medical student.
She shares her story and discusses her KevinMD article, “The magic of medicine stems from the empathy of one heart opening itself to another.”
Did you enjoy today’s episode?
Please click here to leave a review for The Podcast by KevinMD. Subscribe on your favorite podcast app to get notified when a new episode comes out!
Do you know someone who might enjoy this episode? Share this episode to anyone who wants to hear health care stories filled with information, insight, and inspiration.
Hosted by Kevin Pho, MD, The Podcast by KevinMD shares the stories of the many who intersect with our health care system but are rarely heard from.
Transcript
Kevin Pho: Hi and welcome to the show, where we share the stories of the many who intersect with our health care system but are rarely heard from. My name is Kevin Pho, founder and editor of KevinMD. Today on the show we have Claire Brown. She is a medical student, and she wrote the KevinMD article “The magic of medicine stems from the empathy of one heart opening itself to another.” Claire, welcome to the show.
Claire Brown: Thank you so much for having me.
Kevin Pho: We’ll get into your article in a little bit, but first off, can you share your story and your journey to where you are today?
Claire Brown: Yeah, absolutely. So I was born in Boston and really grew up in Charlottesville, Virginia, ended up going to college in New York City, and then straight through, I went to Georgetown medical school, where I’m now in third year.
Real physician voices, twice a week
Free, and one click to unsubscribe.
Kevin Pho: How has medical education been in the midst of the pandemic?
Claire Brown: Yeah, it’s definitely been different. I was just finishing my Step 1 exam, so I was coming off, you know, feeling triumphant, ready to go into the clinical rotations, right when COVID really hit. And so our administration did a great job of reworking our schedules and making a virtual curriculum for two months when we were unable to start in the hospitals. And I was finally able to start going into the hospitals in August and start really working with teams and seeing patients.
Kevin Pho: So over the past year of the pandemic, during your medical school training, what’s something that you’ve learned over this past year that you feel you could share with your other medical student colleagues who may be listening to this?
Claire Brown: You know, always in third year, you’re going to feel like you have no idea what’s going on, and everyone around you is so much more informed and better trained than you are. And in a pandemic, I think that’s only amplified, because you really haven’t had this experience, and everything is a little bit different for everyone. But what I really learned is that the most helpful and meaningful thing you can do at any time is just taking the moments to sit with your patients and really talk to them and hear their stories and make them feel listened to, so they know that someone on the team is really hearing where they’re coming from.
Kevin Pho: So during your year, when you’ve interacted with patients, especially during the pandemic, what are some of the things that are striking that you’ve heard from them?
Claire Brown: Yeah, I mean, there’s such trouble and sadness when no one can come to visit you. They’re not allowed to have visitors with COVID, which, you know, logistically makes sense for safety, but for them, it’s really lonely. And people who have had really poor medical experiences have not been trying to come into the hospital, because they know that means maybe a month of being without anyone that they love. And so I think just seeing their loneliness and their fight to improve their health while having no one around them has been really tough.
Kevin Pho: So let’s transition now into your KevinMD article, and it’s titled “The magic of medicine stems from the empathy of one heart opening itself to another.” Now, for those who didn’t read that article, can you just walk my audience through it and share the story of why you decided to write it?
Claire Brown: Yeah, absolutely. So I’ve been writing a series of articles just based on books that I’ve been reading and relating them to my current medical school experiences, whether it’s a specific interaction with a patient or an overall feeling that I’ve been having that I found similar to something in a novel. This one came actually from a particular interaction that I had, where a patient of mine on an internal medicine service was given a very bad prognosis. And I was trying to deal with my feelings about knowing this, and knowing I couldn’t make it better, and wondering what I could do as a medical student to improve the situation for my patient. And when I shared the news with my patient, you know, they were understandably very upset, and I didn’t really express myself very well.
And my attending, when we left the room, was wonderful and just said, “You know, I see that you’re really connected with this patient. I see that, you know, you’ve been going in every morning for the past two weeks, spending time, and I can see that you’re sad, and you actually genuinely care that, you know, something bad is going to happen.” And I just thought the way the attending validated my emotions and told me, “It’s OK to connect to patients, and it’s OK to feel sad and not feel happy all the time, and that’s actually where you’re going to be the best doctor,” the way he said that really let me know that the path that I’m on is good, and that I can keep connecting to patients, even though sometimes it’s going to make it more emotionally challenging for me.
Kevin Pho: I think what you said is very true. It’s so important to validate those feelings. Now, from your experience as a medical student, how often does that happen? How often do you get that support from, whether it’s an intern, resident, or attending, after a particularly difficult interaction?
Claire Brown: You know, I think I’ve been very lucky to work with great mentors, and I think I’ve had a lot of residents or attendings who have noticed when I’ve really connected to patients, or I’m really trying to, you know, make something work that might just not be working, or there’s a difficult situation that I’m struggling with. But I do think, just the nature of medicine, there are so many patients and so much to do that there’s not always that time to support people who are learning and who are trying to grow and see how they can help and fit into the system.
Kevin Pho: Now, for this particular story, when you had that difficult conversation with that patient, I know that there’s a transition from the preclinical years to the clinical years in third year. Now, what kind of training did you have before going in and speaking to that live patient?
Claire Brown: Yeah, so Georgetown actually, I think, does a really good job preparing us. We have a number of moments to interact with real patients before they allow us to move on to clinical training. We have a communications class as soon as you start first year, so you practice going in, taking interviews with patients, learning how to be empathetic, learning how to talk to them about their story. And then we also do some ambulatory care visits over the course of your first year. I was in the ER with a wonderful attending who really taught me a lot about how to be empathetic, even when you have five minutes to talk to every single patient that’s coming in.
And then in our second year as well, we had a couple of hospital visits, where I worked with another incredible internal medicine doctor who was so good about showing us that you need to take ownership of your patients. Because so often, with the way medicine is now, it can feel like, “Oh, you should go to this doctor,” and then they send them to someone else. But if you take ownership for your patients, they will notice, and they will appreciate it.
Kevin Pho: So what are some of the lessons that you’ve learned from this interaction that can help influence your future interactions with patients?
Claire Brown: I think I’ve just learned a lot about really allowing myself to get close to patients, and it’s OK to spend the extra five minutes to hear about their children or their grandchildren and watch their videos and let them know that they’re really being heard. And sometimes I’m not going to be able to, you know, save them or give them the best medical outcome, but I at least can give them a real, genuine connection and let them know that someone really cares.
Kevin Pho: We’re talking to Claire Brown. She is a medical student, and she wrote the KevinMD article “The magic of medicine stems from the empathy of one heart opening itself to another.” So, Claire, in your series of articles that you wrote for KevinMD, you always like to connect what you’re experiencing as a medical student to some of the novels and books that you’ve read in the past. Now, what are some other stories and books that have inspired you along your medical school journey?
Claire Brown: So I’m involved in this track at Georgetown medical school called the Literature and Medicine track, and that’s run by an incredible man, Dr. Dan Marchalik. He suggests books that we all read, and we come together once a month, now virtually, and talk about them and analyze them and just generally have a sense of community. And a book we read last year was “The Plague” by Albert Camus, which is very relevant to our current situation. That book just really inspired me, because it talks about a doctor who’s in such a horrible, difficult, impossible situation, who goes against everything to keep working to save his patients, even when he knows he won’t save all of them. And that just really spoke to me, as someone about to start clinical rotations, about, you know, how do we push on, and how do we be resilient, even in the toughest of times?
Kevin Pho: So I know in medical school there’s a tremendous amount of reading that you have to do for your courses, for Step 1 and Step 2. Now, why is it important for medical students to read outside their curriculum and to read great works of literature, for instance?
Claire Brown: Yeah, I think that my answer is twofold. The first is that reading people’s stories and learning other opinions and perspectives will always help you be a better doctor, because you will be better at understanding where someone else might be coming from. The other thing is that, you know, Dr. Marchalik has actually done a lot of work about physician burnout, and that the more books you read in a month, the less likely you are to burn out. Now, that might be related to you having a little bit more time to actually read, but it also shows that when you take time to care for yourself and rejuvenate, in a way that’s reading for you, it can actually be really meaningful for your career.
Kevin Pho: And during the pandemic, a lot of medical students are undergoing challenges. What advice and tips can you share with them that you’ve learned from your own journey?
Claire Brown: Yeah, I think one of my biggest things is talk about how you’re feeling. I can guarantee that someone else is feeling probably similar to how you’re feeling. There have been so many times where I felt really down, or thought that I’m not doing a good job and I’m the only one that feels that way, and as soon as I’ve expressed that to another medical student, they’ve said, “You know, I’m actually going through that exact same thing.” And share how you’re feeling, because it will feel validating to know that other people share your emotions.
Kevin Pho: And my final question: What’s your take-home message you want to leave with the KevinMD audience?
Claire Brown: Yeah, I would say just take the time to get to know people’s stories, show them that you care, and take a moment to not think about the other five things you have to do and just sit down and really have a genuine connection.
Kevin Pho: Claire, thanks so much for sharing your time and insight, and thanks again for being on the show.
Claire Brown: Thank you so much for having me.
Listen and followApple PodcastsSpotifyYouTubeMore apps · Browse all episodes
