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!

Tech­no­rati Tags: Post of the Day Award, The Ris­ing Blog­ger, The Sand­man

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