I don't remember when I mastered the art of clinical detachment.
Means you examine and treat someone without getting involved yourself, mainly emotionally.
I think it all began in the first year of medical college when you are in the Dissection hall in Anatomy Department.
You are not expected to react or make faces or any expressions on your face when you see the bodies lying on the tables.
Then when you actually start dissecting. I remember that we became so used to the smells of the D-Hall that it didn't feel like puking when we opened our mouths to speak. Some daredevils even ate groundnuts sitting around the table with the body lying on it which we were dissecting. When the professor came, the shells were hurriedly hidden beneath the dissected tissues !
I didn't like it then and I find it horrible now. But stress makes people do weird things.
Again the experiments on frogs.....
Every thing was a building block in the making of a clinically detached person.
When we started seeing the real patients during clinical classes, we often got scolded for either laughing or hesitating to examine the patients especially with any problem that needs the body to be exposed.
The training was tough.
And tougher we turned out to be.
I remember during my days in department of Medicine, I was once looking after the ward where patients with tuberculosis were admitted.
Some were very sick.
That particular day I did my usual rounds and noted that one male patient was very ill and could expire any moment.
I was sitting in duty room.
Suddenly there were shrieks and crying and wailing from the direction of that ward. I rushed along with the nurse on duty who was carrying the emergency tray.
The moment I stepped in the ward, one sight disturbed me immensely. It was the patient's wife breaking her glass bangles beside his body and crying inconsolably.
I don't know why I was angry at her.
I remember telling her curtly to move away so we could try the resuscitation measures.
But despite everything, the patient died....
It made me sad and for long time the image of the bereaved wife breaking her bangles, haunted me.
That was in 1989.
Even after so many years I see her in front of my eyes as if it was yesterday.
I am just transported to that time, that place.
Only thing that would be different would be my reaction at her loss....
I wouldn't be so clinically detached as to be annoyed with her because she had lost her husband and her whole world had turned upside down !
Life teaches all of us in its own way.
If we are good students we learn to be better humans.
The efforts of all our challenges in life don't go wasted.
And we may learn to use this Clinical detachment towards our sorrows too. Life would be much better, with more reasons to be at peace with oneself..
Means you examine and treat someone without getting involved yourself, mainly emotionally.
I think it all began in the first year of medical college when you are in the Dissection hall in Anatomy Department.
You are not expected to react or make faces or any expressions on your face when you see the bodies lying on the tables.
Then when you actually start dissecting. I remember that we became so used to the smells of the D-Hall that it didn't feel like puking when we opened our mouths to speak. Some daredevils even ate groundnuts sitting around the table with the body lying on it which we were dissecting. When the professor came, the shells were hurriedly hidden beneath the dissected tissues !
I didn't like it then and I find it horrible now. But stress makes people do weird things.
Again the experiments on frogs.....
Every thing was a building block in the making of a clinically detached person.
When we started seeing the real patients during clinical classes, we often got scolded for either laughing or hesitating to examine the patients especially with any problem that needs the body to be exposed.
The training was tough.
And tougher we turned out to be.
I remember during my days in department of Medicine, I was once looking after the ward where patients with tuberculosis were admitted.
Some were very sick.
That particular day I did my usual rounds and noted that one male patient was very ill and could expire any moment.
I was sitting in duty room.
Suddenly there were shrieks and crying and wailing from the direction of that ward. I rushed along with the nurse on duty who was carrying the emergency tray.
The moment I stepped in the ward, one sight disturbed me immensely. It was the patient's wife breaking her glass bangles beside his body and crying inconsolably.
I don't know why I was angry at her.
I remember telling her curtly to move away so we could try the resuscitation measures.
But despite everything, the patient died....
It made me sad and for long time the image of the bereaved wife breaking her bangles, haunted me.
That was in 1989.
Even after so many years I see her in front of my eyes as if it was yesterday.
I am just transported to that time, that place.
Only thing that would be different would be my reaction at her loss....
I wouldn't be so clinically detached as to be annoyed with her because she had lost her husband and her whole world had turned upside down !
Life teaches all of us in its own way.
If we are good students we learn to be better humans.
The efforts of all our challenges in life don't go wasted.
And we may learn to use this Clinical detachment towards our sorrows too. Life would be much better, with more reasons to be at peace with oneself..
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