I just finished my fourth week on the psychiatric unit at the hospital, and I love it. It has been such a wonderful experience. I never imagined my job could be so satisfying and rewarding, God has truly blessed me with love for my work. This is how I know I am in the right profession, I don't clock watch or wonder when my next break will come like I have in almost every other job in the past. At work I see people every day who have hit rock bottom, who have no money, family, friends, home, and to top off their situations they live with debilitating mental illnesses like schizophrenia, major depression, borderline personality disorder, obsessive compulsive disorder, and other mood and personality disorders. The most rewarding part of my job is when I am able to rekindle hope in my patients.
For example, I started working with a female patient this last week who is slightly younger than me. During my first session with her she talked about her substance abuse, family and social network issues, and mental illness issues. She was extremely hopeless throughout most of our time together. About 2/3 of the way through our session she asked me "How old are you?" So I told her I was 27. She then looked at me with the most exhausted and sad face have ever seen. With tears streaming down her cheeks she said "And I bet you got it all don't you?" Not following her train of thought I asked what she meant and she expanded by saying "You got a women who loves you, and a nice place and a job." And I was speechless, she was comparing herself to me because we were around the same age. Now, as a therapist I am trained to think on my toes. But being as green as I am out of school all I could manage to do was stare into her pain soaked eyes and try to imagine how hopeless she was. After what seemed like an eternity had past I managed to find some words that I could work off of, I said "You are so young." She just kept looking into my eyes and I began to explain to her that this was her chance to take hold of her life and begin to rebuild it from the bottom up. Towards the end of our session I was able to keep her attention on the future rather than the past.
This is kind of a switch in topic but one of the things that just turns me off concerning the health care industry (including hospitals, clinics, nursing homes, doctors, nurses and all other clinical professionals) is that it has sacrificed quality of care for expedited results. Rather than be with the patient who has a terminal illness and listen to them, empathize with them and reassure them, most practitioners objectify patients. And when this occurs the patient is viewed as their diagnosis. In working in this type of setting one can here practitioners use phrases like this "Someone needs to draw blood on the schizophrenic in 303" and "Oh, are you talking about the cancer in 401" and "Do you want the amputee in 208 on your case load." Using this language allows practitioners to objectify patients and when one views their patients as the illness or condition they fail to treat the person as a person. I won't get into it but doing this can function as a defense mechanism which allows practitioners to better handle the stress of working is such a stressful and mentally taxing environment. Regardless, all this to say, if all of us in the health professions would take a little time to listen and comfort our patients the quality of care would be so much better.
I am sorry for the unexpected tangent I just had. I never know where these things are going to go once I begin to write. If your interested in learning a little more about this idea you can read The Anatomy of Hope by Jerome Groopman. Its good stuff.
Anyway, Love and miss all of you.
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