A family physician writes in The New England Journal of Medicine about being asked, again and again, “And how long will you be staying, Doctor?”
“Caring for entire families helps me understand my community. I know that a patient is stressed because her son struggles with alcoholism: I’ve admitted him several times with pancreatitis. I know another patient can’t focus on her diabetes because she is still grieving her mother’s death: for years she wheeled her mother into my clinic for monthly appointments. When a teenager returns from a first year at college and asks for birth control, I remember her mother crying in my office months earlier, overwhelmed with pride and worry at having her first baby move so far away.
The patients weary of explaining all this — their tragedies, triumphs, and transformations — to a new face every few years, no matter how bright or kind that new face is. Seven years in, I understand why my patients would be disappointed if I left. As their doctor, I would be, too.”
A Country Doctor Reads: 
Leave a Reply