The Right Time to Lose a Patient

Although there is really never a right time to die or even witness death, it is important to acknowledge that death is a reality, and that all health care practitioners will be subjected to death at some point. For that reason, I raise the question; is there an appropriate time to lose a patient? From my perspective the answer is yes, and for good reason.

Having recently finished twelve weeks of Internal Medicine, the first of my core third year rotations, I vividly remember the excitement I felt when walking into the hospital. I knew all the work I accomplished in the classroom was about to be put to good use. I had the opportunity to help interns, residents, and attendings to positively impact individuals’ lives. I would see patients with diseases that I had previously only encountered in textbooks, although I knew that these textbooks rarely highlight and explain the pain and suffering that accompany these pathologies.

In fact, my studies to that point had left me with some naivete, which I must assume all medical students experience when first starting clinical work. We are excited to see cases we read about, although we often forget that many of these ailments take the lives of those afflicted. Throughout our education, we transform conditions into hypothetical situations, rarely developing an understanding of their severity. It is easy to regard a set of symptoms as fiction or case study, and it was only through experience that I discovered that we must not be so quick to desensitize ourselves to these cases and the people affected by them.

I was challenged with observing the death of a patient early on in my rotation. Three days before her status began to decline, we had a long conversation about her children, the upcoming holidays, and her plans upon discharge from the hospital. At this time she was in