Of hearts and heartlessness and Henry the happy hand

<---- A heart nebula. Much prettier than the actual thing. Yet unlikely to fit inside my chest and circulate essential nutrients to my tissues. Alas.

Today, as you might have guessed, was cardiology day. Wards were unpleasant as usual. The doctors here have a brusqueness to them which comes off as callousness to me, although I suppose it's their form of professionalism. It makes them excellent teachers because they are more than willing to poke and prod and undress and make completely sure that we have seen every single feature of illness on our patient. But when our patients are these adorable old ladies who can't breathe it just feels cruel.

We had one patient today who started crying in the middle of our exam when we asked her about a scar on her chest. It turned out that she had had a breast removed unnecessarily when her doctors mistook a bruise for cancer. (!) Which is clearly upsetting. One of my classmates asked the doctor in charge if we should maybe cut the examination short since she was upset. The doctor says, without even looking at the woman, "Oh, she suffers from depressive disorder, many patients with chronic diseases do- she's not crying because you're hurting her. Continue." And I'm thinking are you kidding me? She's not depressed, she's sad because she's in the hospital and you've just reminded her in front of a group of 10 students that she only has one breast because of a doctor's oversight. Of course she's upset. And maybe we could show her a little compassion instead of lining up and poking at her scars and then leaving and talking about her.

The next woman also got upset halfway through and asked us to stop. And our doctor told us to keep going. Now it's one thing for us to continue when the patient is a little uncomfortable. It's another thing entirely when a patient explicitly asks us to stop. In my mind, that's it. We're here to learn. But a hospital's main responsibility is to care for patients. If our education is going to harm a patient, the patient comes first. Period. And that didn't exactly happen today.

And again, our physician went from patient to patient to patient without washing her hands. I managed to rally our group and we all made a big show of washing our hands and stethoscopes in between each exam- but the doctor was not inspired to follow suit. I can already tell that I'm going to become that annoying obsessive hand-washer on the wards- but if something that simple can prevent more than 50% of hospital-acquired infections, how dare I not be obsessive about it? I guess as I get busy and tired I'll start forgetting and start caring less- but if I start out psycho about it maybe it'll become a habit and stick.

Perhaps if the hospital tried these posters. . .