Compassionate caring because it matters: listening to those who care and thankful for their teaching voices…

Snow has fallen, holiday lights twinkle and the bustle of the holidays are upon us.  I am thankful for today – a Monday – so I can catch up with myself.  The weekend was too busy!  Too much rushing; too much doing – a lot like each day. Perhaps this holiday season, it won’t just be about the “doing” but a lot more about the “being” and maybe understanding more about “others” and how our actions make a difference in the lives of those others.

So, as a departure from the routine and thanks to Paul Levy’s blog, Running a Hospital, I share this touching acceptance speech by Amy Ship, M.D., a primary care physician, as she is awarded this year’s Compassionate Caregiver Award by the Kenneth B. Schwartz Center. It is an elegant speech full of grace and humanity.  No matter where we are on the healthcare delivery continuum, it is good to consider, “the power of the smallest gesture” and to recognize that there is “no billing code for compassion.”  Thank you, Dr. Ship, for the caring that you exemplify and the teaching that you do.

Below is the Raymond Carver poem that she references and quotes in her speech:

What the Doctor Said

He said it doesn’t look good
he said it looks bad in fact real bad
he said I counted thirty-two of them on one lung before
I quit counting them
I said I’m glad I wouldn’t want to know
about any more being there than that
he said are you a religious man do you kneel down
in forest groves and let yourself ask for help
when you come to a waterfall
mist blowing against your face and arms
do you stop and ask for understanding at those moments
I said not yet but I intend to start today
he said I’m real sorry he said
I wish I had some other kind of news to give you
I said Amen and he said something else
I didn’t catch and not knowing what else to do
and not wanting him to have to repeat it
and me to have to fully digest it
I just looked at him
for a minute and he looked back it was then
I jumped up and shook hands with this man who’d just given me
something no one else on earth had ever given me

Tags: compassionate caring, patient experience

This entry was posted on Monday, December 7th, 2009 at 2:25 pm and is filed under the practice of medicine. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.