2018 Hope Babette Tang Humanism in Healthcare Essay Contest
2018; Lippincott Williams & Wilkins; Volume: 93; Issue: 12 Linguagem: Inglês
10.1097/acm.0000000000002448
ISSN1938-808X
Autores Tópico(s)Autism Spectrum Disorder Research
ResumoI was nervous to say the least when I got assigned to the schizophrenia unit of a major psychiatric hospital for my second ever clinical rotation as a nursing student. My initial reaction was how am I, a 22-year-old, second-semester nursing student, equipped to deal with people with serious mental illness? Nerves were transcending down my entire body when I heard where I had been assigned. Going over one PowerPoint lecture about therapeutic communication does not necessarily make one prepared to interact with these patients one-on-one, I thought to myself. It’s one thing to read a textbook and take a test, and another to see these disorders affecting actual people in real life, to look at them face on, eye to eye. Feeling completely unprepared and expecting the worst, here I was at 6:30 am on a Saturday. Nursing school has numerous moments like that, sheer panic with an overwhelming feeling of “What did I get myself into?” Forcing myself to stop the internal dialogue in my head, I started walking towards the doors of the unit. I tugged nervously at my one pair of slacks, the ones I bought for my nursing school interview, and contemplated briefly on how far I had come since that day. I remember talking passionately about wanting to be a nurse, and here I was being thrown into the ocean, it seemed. I was shaking as I fiddled with the key to open the double doors to the unit. I could feel myself starting to sweat. Past those doors was yet another set of locked double doors, this time with “CAUTION ELOPMENT RISK” plastered across them. That’s a comforting sign, I thought sarcastically to myself. The mechanical doors opened slowly and there I stood, blankly staring. I paced slowly around the unit, finding myself judging and examining each and every patient in the day area. Are they going to hurt me? Why is that guy mumbling under his breath constantly? Why is this other woman yelling at the nurse? I was ashamed at how quick I was to pass judgment, but I felt completely out of my element. I was tempted to hide in the conference room and pretend to look at patient charts all day. “Get it together,” I mumbled to myself and continued pacing and examining the day room of the unit. The walls were neutral; the couches were neutral; and the tables were neutral. What a therapeutic environment? Yet somehow my mind could not stop racing. My attention shifted, and I quickly noticed a young man sitting alone at one of the tables. I wanted to talk with him—I yearned to learn his story. But the idea of talking to a psychiatric patient alone riddled me with fear. Shaking off my self-doubts, I walked up to him nervously and introduced myself. “Hi, I’m a student nurse. Today is my first psychiatric rotation. Honestly, I’m not really sure what to do,” I said offering my hand hesitantly. I felt my cheeks turn pink and realized none of that was in the script I had prepared for my patient interviews. I was technically supposed to use a broad opening, and most definitely was not supposed to tell him I had no clue what I was doing. Regardless, a sweeping grin spread across the young man’s face as he shook my hand in return. “Hey! I’m Stephen. It’s okay, I’m not really sure what to do here either,” he said jokingly. I immediately felt myself relax. I quickly learned that we were actually the same age, freshly 22. He told me about his dreams to go to college and how much he loved his mother. Our conversation was easy, natural, and flowed. I was amazed at, for a lack of a better term, how normal he seemed. We sat in silence for a few minutes, and towards the end of the conversation, I could tell he wanted to tell me something. He finally looked at me intensely in the eyes and said, “You’re the only person who has talked to me like I’m a normal person.” I swallowed hard. He continued: “All the other students that have been here just stared at me like they were scared of me.” I felt myself tear up, ashamed at how 15 minutes prior I was tempted to hide away in the conference room and do the same exact thing. His words made me realize how easy it is to look at a psychiatric patient and see only that. In reality, these patients are so much more than a label or diagnosis. Stephen, recently diagnosed with schizophrenia at age 22, is more similar to me than I would have ever guessed. Maybe it is human nature to try to focus on the obvious, to keep our distance, put people in a box, and perhaps that makes working in health care easier. But easier is not better, and when you dig beyond labeling a patient with an illness, health care can become more encompassing by treating the entire person and not just the illness. Stephen’s words that day changed my perspective of what it really means to be a nurse, because sometimes just treating someone as a human and simply talking to them makes an immeasurable difference in their level of care. When I left the unit that day, I walked up to Stephen to say goodbye. He handed me a picture that he drew me, a picture of a beautiful, vibrant sunset. He proudly told me that he used all the crayons in the box and even mixed some colors to make it just perfect for me. On the sheet of paper above the sunset, it read, “Thank you for truly seeing me.” I vowed that day to never write off a patient or to let their illness define them. There is so much more to people than what meets the eye. Walking out of the unit that day and waving goodbye, I did not look at someone who was a psychiatric patient, I just saw Stephen as Stephen.2018 Hope Babette Tang Humanism in Healthcare Essay Contest The Arnold P. Gold Foundation holds an annual essay contest to encourage medical and nursing students to reflect on their experiences and engage in narrative writing. The contest began in 1999 focused on medical students and expanded to include nursing students in 2018. Students are asked to respond to a specific prompt in a 1,000-word essay. For the 2018 contest, students were asked to reflect on the following quote and share a health care experience with a patient or fellow clinician that led to a new, unexpected understanding or perspective: “It’s not what you look at that matters, but what you see.” —Henry David Thoreau More than 200 essays were submitted. A distinguished panel of judges, ranging from esteemed medical professionals to notable authors, reviewed the submissions. Three winning essays from medical students and three winning essays from nursing students were selected, along with 10 honorable mentions. The winning essays were published on the Arnold P. Gold Foundation website (www.gold-foundation.org) and will be published in consecutive issues of Academic Medicine and the Journal of Professional Nursing in the fall/winter of 2018. The contest is named for Hope Babette Tang-Goodwin, MD, who was an assistant professor of pediatrics. Her approach to medicine combined a boundless enthusiasm for her work, intellectual rigor, and deep compassion for her patients. She was an exemplar of humanism in medicine. The Arnold P. Gold Foundation, which is celebrating its 30th anniversary this year, champions the human connection in health care. The nonprofit organization engages medical and nursing schools and their students, health systems, companies, and individual clinicians in the joy and meaning of humanistic health care, so that patients and their families can be partners in collaborative, compassionate, and scientifically excellent care.
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