In The New England Journal of Medicine essay “The Name of the Dog,” physician Taimur Safder remembers a lesson learned early in residency. Safder is stumped when, “as a freshly minted doctor,” he presents “a patient who was admitted for chest pain after walking his dog” and his attending asks a curious question: “‘What was the name of his dog?'” Safder is initially perplexed as to why this question even matters, but when the attending physician takes the group to the patient’s bedside to inquire, he realizes that very question “led to a transformation I did not fully appreciate at the time: there was an actual person behind that hospital-issued gown.”

This lesson proves valuable to Safder’s medical training. Through it, he forms similar connections with patients that allow him to “have difficult discussions about [the patient’s] immigration status and what it meant for his treatment plan,” and sign a “treaty under which [Safder] would read the ‘studies’ [the patient] brought in about black cherry and milk thistle and she would start taking one new medication every 2 months.” In learning about a person beyond their identity simply as a patient, trust develops and the patient-physician relationship can grow.

While caring for a patient who eventually ends up in hospice, Safder comes to another realization: “the question that I’d been carrying around since my first day of residency could work another type of transformation: it helped my patients see the person behind the white coat.”

Writing Prompt: Has there been a question you’ve asked a patient that revealed essential information about them as a person? Have you, as a patient, been asked a question by a medical provider that may not have seemed directly medically relevant but was important to them understanding you as a person? What was the question? What did it reveal? Write for 10 minutes.