Author: Nanadadzie Ghansah

Like life, the practice of medicine is filled with the highs and lows, the moments of heartbreak and euphoria of success, times of hair-pulling (if one has any) frustration and uplifting encouragement.
Loosing a patient unexpectedly is very traumatic. It happens to every doctor and it is a pipe dream to think it would never happen to you. It is a fact that some specialties are less prone to experience it than others. However, when it does happen, most physicians have no one to talk to.
Fellow physicians are the worst group of people to seek solace from. The majority have their own professional and personal issues. Then is the judgmental bit – “If you had done A instead of B, maybe…” Which leaves our significant others, the majority of whom have already been overburdened with medical talk to the point where they are insensitive and frankly do not care anymore. And then is the small issue of “..anything you say can be used against you when the family sues you!’
Would it not be great it there was a ‘listening ear’ for physicians in those times? I am thinking a 1-800 number one could call and be able to unload the disappointment and pain. Say 1-800-i-LISTEN.
A physician could call and talk anonymously to a listening ear about the death one had in the operating room (or emergency room or cardiac cath lab or floor).
About the fact that the team did all it could? About the fact that the patient had undiagnosed SAM or carcinoid or an unknown tight left main? About the fact that you were in the operating room for 15 hours? About the fact that you bonded with the patient and his wife gave you a hug and his kids shook your hand? About the fact that the malignancy was inoperable? About all those things we are supposed to keep inside because we are supermen but really aren’t?
What if you could just open up without fear of judgement or medico-legal action?
What if…?

“The Scream” by Edvard Munch, 1910

Then are those times where one out of pure frustration wishes to yell or scream or throw something. My surgical colleagues, can I get an Amen? Yet you cannot yell or swear or throw anything. It is unprofessional and creates a hostile work environment. It is absolutely disrespectful to the team busting their chops to make it happen. You may have done it in the good old days but we are in 2016 and that kind of behavior will get you in trouble quickly. However, every doctor has had a day where frustration rolled down like waters and impediments like a mighty stream. Where that surgeon didn’t understand that blocks sometimes don’t work, where that anesthesiologist cancelled that case even though the best cardiologist in town “cleared the patient”, where that cardiologist wants you to do that CABG today and not on Monday, where you are stuck in the OR because the PACU is full, where you find out that some administrator decided to pull your favorite suture or antibiotic because it’s too expensive, wherw you have to work with the scrub tech you cannot stand….. the list goes on.

You want to scream and yell and call someone names that would make Tony Montana wince, don’t you? You want to do that because long before you became a doctor, you were a human with emotions and long after you cannot practice anymore, you will still be that human!… And humans get frustrated and sometimes, just sometimes, want to yell and scream and hop up and down on one leg and then the other.
So won’t it be great if there was a Scream Room?
“Scream Room?”, you wonder. “What is a Scream Room?”
The Scream Room would be a soundproof room somewhere in the hospital where one could go and scream and throw things of one’s choice for as long as one wanted to let out pent-up frustration. One could use as many four-letter words as one wanted and jump up and down like Rumpelstiltskin if one wished to.
The room would also have a 100-lb punching bag hanging from the ceiling. There would be boxing gloves available. One only has to pin a picture of the cause of one’s ire on the bag, don appropriate size boxing gloves and punch away.
What if there was such a room?
What if…?
Like I wrote earlier, before we become doctors, we were humans. Humans are strong but can also be weak. They can be wise but sometimes folly reigns supreme. They can be patient and understanding but occasionally brash and irritable. It’s only in accepting our strengths and weaknesses that we become whole. Whole humans. Whole doctors.