Putting A Face To A...History of Presenting Illness

Today, like every day before a clinical rotation, I went to the hospital to pick up my patient assignment and fill in my blank care plan as completely as possible from the information in the paper and electronic medical records.  I find it inconvenient to have the information either split and/or duplicated in the paper chart and the EMR.  It takes me forever to find the information I seek.  But alas, this is the system we live with.

We are not allowed to meet or have contact with our patients until clinical day.  So as I was filling in the blanks as required (recent labs, demographic information, history of presenting illness, pathophysiology, current medications) I found myself, as I always do, wondering what my patient looks like.  And not only, what does my patient look like now and what will I encounter when I walk into the room tomorrow, but what did my patient look like before he/she was sick?  What kind of life did he/she have before becoming a patient in this hospital for weeks or months?  What kind of person must he/she have been before they were defined by laboratory values, diagnostic procedure reports and a "face sheet"?

I find it hard to relate to the history and physical as represented by a doctor's barely decipherable chicken scratch on a form in the chart (sorry docs...).  Without a face, a family, a story...there is no connection.  And it makes me resentful of the seemingly thousands of medication cards and numerous pages of care plans I have to fill out for this nameless faceless diagnosis.  

But I'm sorry!  I am not resentful toward you, my patient - I just haven't met you yet!!  And tomorrow, when I finally meet you, I will know your story; I will understand why you have all of those medications and tubes and machines, and radiological and surgical procedures.  And hopefully, I will understand what it means to you to be on all those medications and connected to all of those tubes and machines and to have all of those radiological and surgical procedures.  Then I will learn from you, and hopefully you will also learn from me.