How a Nurse Quietly Helped One Intern Out of a Tricky Situation
Illustration by Annelisa Ochoa. All rights reserved
In this month’s Reflections essay, “My Turn,” a recently retired physician tells a story of how a nurse adroitly helped him through a very disorienting moment when he was still an intern. Here’s a bit of the setup:
Medicine was my first rotation as an intern. . . . [T]he medicine rotation had a particularly intimidating reputation and a red-hot I was not. I was terrified.
On morning rounds every day our entourage of physicians, nurses, and students would go room to room discussing each patient. I can still see the open door to Mrs. Finkelstein’s room near the morning sunlight at the end of the hallway. Mrs. Finkelstein was old and was dying. And every morning when we walked in, her husband was sitting there next to the bed, holding her hand. He told us regularly how many years they had been together. We each dreaded being the one on call when she died.
There are many situations in medicine and nursing that require a certain amount of experience—most readers will agree that this is definitely one of them. At a certain point in the story, the author finds himself being asked a question that absolutely needs to be answered, and answered immediately. It’s not […]
On this month’s cover, nurse Elie Kasindi Kabululu cares for a patient at Centre Médical Evangélique in Nyankunde, Beni, Democratic Republic of Congo. Originally, this location served a population of 150,000 and also housed a nursing school; but in 2002, during war in the region, the facility was attacked. About 1,000 people were killed—including patients and staff—and the center was looted and destroyed.