A Moment of Truth for Every New Doctor

Aaron Singh -- There comes a moment in every medical student’s life, when he realizes that all he’s learning is not just for exams, that one day he will be out there on his own, with real live patients and no medical professor leaning over his shoulder to guide him.

I knew it would happen.

And this week it did.

I have blogged here before about being a first-aider, and here about my University having a highly theoretical premedical course without much clinical skill development. Back before my encounter with an epileptic woman aboard a plane, I wouldn’t have hesitated to rush forward during a medical emergency and volunteer whatever help I could. Then I read the comments under the first-aid post, advising me not to rush into situations. I also heard horror stories from other medical students about medics and doctors getting sued by people who didn’t want to be saved. And I hesitated. All that I had believed about medicine was challenged. You couldn’t just rush in and save someone if they didn’t want to be saved. And if you didn’t know EXACTLY how to help and what to do in that situation, it was better perhaps not to step forward at all.

It was a normal Monday afternoon. I spend my afternoons in Pharmacology lab sessions with about half the medics in my year. This particular afternoon’s practical was a laid-back, slow one, and I was at my table, mixing drugs up, when behind me I heard a loud crash.

I turned around and saw that the whole lab was still. Whatever had happened was hidden from my view by another table, along with the medics sitting at it. Other medics were craning their necks to get a good view, but no one seemed to be moving. Nothing seemed urgent. I assumed someone had dropped another test-tube or beaker, or some apparatus had fallen to the floor, and everyone was taking advantage of the interruption to take their minds off their work for a while.

But people kept staring. I got that feeling you get in your stomach when you know something isn’t right. No one was moving, not even the demonstrators. I asked around, “What’s happened? Did someone drop something?” but no one answered. They just kept staring at the floor.

So I crossed the lab and came around the table. And lying on the ground before me, in the middle of a slowly growing crowd of onlookers, was a student. Passed out on the floor.

No one moved. A lab full of some of the brightest medical students in the world, and none of them had any idea what to do when someone fainted in front of them.

Then it kicked in. I was a first-aider. I was a MEDIC. I could DO something here. Go forward, you fool. She could be hurt. I started to step forward…

…and stopped.

And through my mind flashed a single question, a question I am ashamed to admit ever crossed me now, especially at such a critical juncture:

Will I get sued?

Seems ridiculous in retrospect. She was just a medical student who had passed out in the lab. Not a patient going into cardiac arrest or requiring complex surgery. But that’s what flashed through my mind.

I was afraid to practise my art. Afraid to accept responsibility.

Everyone kept staring, myself included now. Finally a grad student raised his voice, “Is anyone here a first-aider?”

I started to reply, “Ye—“

Then a long white coat flashed by me. A tall handsome demonstrator, exactly the kind you’d expect to come zooming out of the sky to save you in a crisis, rushed past and bent over the girl, carrying a first aid kit. I blinked. A senior first-aider! Now maybe I could help.

So I joined him and introduced myself. The girl was already recovering consciousness; she had just fainted momentarily, probably due to tiredness. In a few minutes she could stand, and we sent her home. The tall demonstrator clapped me on the back and went back to work. No harm done.

But the incident is still ringing in my mind. I’ve got a long way to go before I’m out there on my own, but it scares me. Both that I hesitated, and that I was afraid to perform my duty. The first duty of a doctor. I’m safely ensconced in preclinical medicine now, with supervisors looking over my shoulder to clean up any messes I make, but it’s only a matter of years before I find myself in a white coat and having to tend to real patients. And when that time comes, I pray I do not hesitate.

February 23, 2007 in Aaron Singh | Permalink

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