Day 14: The personal side of medicine

Off to the center for family medicine! This was my first time shadowing at an outpatient facility and the dynamic was certainly different than that of the hospital's. It was a short day for shadowing but I still enjoyed it and saw a wide variety of patients. Dr. Molly Benedum as the physician I shadowed that morning and it was interesting to see that she was a founding faculty the GHS medical school. Her bedside manner was very good and she adapted very well to the many different patients that she saw. I liked how she was able to talk (the patients that she saw regularly at least) about their lives outside of their visit. This different to seeing the doors at Memorial briefly talk to their patients about their next procedure or not having as personable of a conversation because that would be the first and last time that they would see the patient.

One particular patient that was very interesting to observe was a deaf man who came in to the center for the first time. I remember seeing a translator used for a Spanish patient at Memorial but watching the sign language interpreter work was very different. I had never seen someone use sign language before in person either. Dr. Benedum also communicated with the patient directly by drawing pictures to help the patient understand what was going on in his body since the interpretation was too confusing in sign language.

Dr. Benedum talked about a variety of things with her patients: which medications had positive side-effects that would help with other concerns, different recipes to eat to help control the patient's diabetes, pre-cautioning against narcotic addiction, further treatment at the hospital that they would receive, and ways that the patients family could help them at home. I enjoyed seeing this personal side of medicine and I liked how structured Dr. Benedum's day was. It certainly gives me something to think about practicing one day.

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