(PRLeap.com) In a series of award-winning essays, current medical students share their first-hand experiences of open, honest, and difficult conversations with patients and family members whose views or experiences differ from their own. The four winners of the ABIM Foundation's third annual Building Trust Essay Contest - along with brief excerpts from their essays - are as follows:
"You have to understand, this is a sixteen-year-old kid who maybe never learned how to have an open conversation about his feelings because some of those words don't even exist in Mandarin. Give him time."
I am internally slack jawed, awed by the power of a clinician's authentic care to guide a patient toward a decision that will benefit their health. Over the next few days, I practice getting down on one knee, speaking to the person and not the pathology, and creating space for vulnerability. We talk about March Madness brackets, he agrees to starting Vivitrol injections, and I watch his eyes light up as he tells me about his daughter. The trust between us builds, and I start to write a happy ending.
I rearranged the consult documents on my desk for the hundredth time as I waited for a call from an unknown number. When it rang, I took a deep breath and answered, greeting my first consult as an abortion doula. We were both nervous to be speaking to one another, yet in our vulnerability we found solace. I was a 21-year-old medical student, and she was a 40-year-old single mother of two facing an impossible decision.
Trust is integral to successful medicine, and as a student, my responsibility to build trust does not end when I leave the hospital. One's lived experiences often take precedence over rationality and knowledge when trust is at stake - even though my brother-in-law is a highly educated, logical individual, he does not automatically trust the recommendations of a physician simply because they are rooted in science.
"Vastly different in scope, and highly personal and reflective in nature, our panel of judges selected from an exceptional group of essays that highlight the challenges medical professionals and students in training face daily in building trust with patients in a highly skeptical and increasingly polarized environment," said Jessica Perlo, MPH, Executive Vice President of the ABIM Foundation. "This year's winning essays offer the reader a refreshingly optimistic look into the future of health care."
Essays submitted by future physicians, nurses, physical therapists, and others from more than 40 medical and nursing schools across the U.S. and Puerto Rico were reviewed and scored on the (1) connection to the topic of trust, (2) quality of writing, (3) novelty of the message, and (4) opportunity for others to learn by an esteemed panel of judges:
Full essays can be read here.
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Jaime McClennen
ABIM Foundation
http://www.abimfoundation.org
You can see the original version and more on PRLeap here: http://www.prleap.com/pr/296756/a-doulas-patient-bond-eye-level-counsel-translating-trust-into-mandarin
