The Sandman

If you have ever watched a television program or movie about medical professionals responding to a crisis, you have no doubt seen stereotypical characters including the cool, unflappable, experienced physician, the arrogant, overly-confident resident or the nervous, bumbling intern. QuietusLeo teaches his readers that reality is probably somewhere between those extreme portrayals.

“Some men are born cool, some achieve cool, and some have cool thrust upon them.”

QuietusLeo, paraphrasing Shakespeare

In No, not that four letter word, the other one, QuietusLeo instructs that “doctors aren’t supposed to fear . . . anything. But fear is there. Sometimes it’s ‘normal,’ for example, fear of failure, fear of causing a patient pain, fear of losing a patient (all the more acute in the case of children), etc.” A healthy dose of fear or anxiety is appropriate, but in the extreme “can can be counterproductive and even dangerous – it paralyzes the mind when quick action is warrented, for example, during an emergency.”

QuietusLeo speaks from experience: He is an anesthesiologist and Advanced Cardiac Life Support instructor who teaches his students that doctors’ feelings of fear and anxiety must be controlled during, but examined and processed following a medical emergency.

Hubris, in medicine, is the original sin. The only thing that disgusts me more than incompetence in a physician is vanity. Hubris is born of fear. Fear of exposure, fear of failure and fear of showing weakness. When you see a vain person, scratch the surface (one may need an ice pick) and you will discover a coward. Not a coward in the sense of external bravery, but one who won’t face his/her own failings. Such a person has stopped growing, learning and improving. When that happens, our greatest fear, of harming our patients, is most likely.

QuietusLeo describes the approach he uses with his pupils, recounting an encounter with a young paramedic.

The Post of the Day Award is bestowed upon QuietusLeo because he No, not that four letter word, the other one grants laypersons a glimpse of the pressures and stressors that medical personnel face and must overcome as they respond to each unique medical emergency. As a mentor, he is providing invaluable advice and tutelage to up-and-coming physicians which, in turn, will improve the value of the services delivered to those individuals’ patients in the years to come.

Congratulations and thank you, QuietusLeo!

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