We were standing next to the nurses station. My senior resident was in the middle of explaining a fairly basic surgical procedure to an elderly patient's wife and daughter. I was standing next to him, trying my best to give reassuring smiles and nods as he answered their questions. When he was done explaining everything and we were about to leave, the patient's wife extended her hand to us. My resident reached out his hand and she took it in hers. Her eyes filled with tears that she didn't try to hide and she quietly said, "Please, do a good job. Do a really, really good job." He firmly, shook her hand and promised that we would, and then we walked away.
That moment has stuck with me. The wife's vulnerability, her pain at the thought of her husband enduring another procedure, the hopelessness she must have felt. The doctor-patient relationship is such a complex thing and I find myself all too often taking it for granted. But in that moment, the true nature of what it means to be a physician was briefly and elegantly on display. And again I was reminded of the contract I implicitly enter into when I put on that white coat. Whether listening to heart beats, writing prescriptions, or cutting open an abdomen, at the foundation of medicine lies a promise to do a really, really good job.
