Although I’ve never met her, author and critical care physician Rana Awdish on some level feels familiar. Not only are we both part of a supportive online group of physician-writers, but I just finished reading her wrenching memoir, “In Shock: My Journey from Death to Recovery and the Redemptive Power of Hope.” Awdish’s gripping account of her near-death experience, subsequent hospitalization in her own ICU and revelations about the shortcomings in both support for and education of medical providers in the realm of empathy are illuminating. Her book is infused with challenge and hope and a call to transform the way we train physicians and care for patients.
Awdish is thrust from the world of providing medicine into that of receiving it – a patient under her own colleagues’ care. The contrast of these positions of power and vulnerability are striking and Awdish describes the jarring experience and her own enlightenment as she pivots between these two roles. She shares with the reader her revelations regarding how we provide medical care to those in crisis and inspires us to find a better way.
I was particularly convicted by Awdish’s insight into how medical training encourages physicians to suppress many of our emotions. She traces this ideal back to the father of modern medicine, Sir William Osler, who encouraged “‘aequanimitas.’ Osler regarded this trait as the premier quality of a physician. It represented an imperturbability that was described as manifesting in ‘coolness and presence of mind under all circumstances, calmness amid storm, clearness of judgment in moments of grave peril.'”
Awdish asserts that as physicians “we aren’t trained to see our patients. We are trained to see pathology. We are taught to forage with scalpels and forceps for an elusive diagnosis buried within obfuscating tissues. We excavate alongside our mentors in delicate, deliberate layers, test by test, attempting to unearth disease. The true relationship is forged between the doctor and the disease.” Do you agree with Awdish’s assessment? Why or why not?
If you’re a physician, if you’re a patient: read this book. Discuss it with your colleagues, mull over it with your book club. The questions Awdish raises, the challenges she poses are vital to improving the way we care for each other in our most acute times of need.
Writing Prompt: If you’re a physician, did you learn to develop “aequanimitas” through your training? Did you feel this trait was a requirement, overtly stated or otherwise, to be a “good physician?” Have you yourself ever been a patient feeling, like Awdish, “powerless in a way that is impossible to imagine, from a privileged position of wholeness and well-being?” Awdish lists biting phrases that were directly said to her or that she overheard when she was a patient. Have you experienced similarly painful words from a medical provider? Have you said such words to a patient before? Try writing from both the patient and the medical provider’s perspectives. Write for 10 minutes.