Empathy and compassion arise from sensitizing events, often many. Sometimes it’s easier than others to track those events to their origins. Patient Jane provided student-doctor Brian Sou with one such activating event. (Field Notes “A Student’s Moment in NYC’s Most Famous Hospital”) In their first encounter, Sou writes “I did not manage to comfort Jane in her moment of vulnerability, when she needed someone to do so the most. I was so interested in the medical aspect of curing that I completely neglected the compassionate side of healing.”
Remarkably, he gets a second chance with Jane. “I was not about to let this kind lady go through her biggest fear alone again,” and he seized the moment, stood beside her and talked her through her phobia of needles as her IV was placed. “In that small moment, I realized just how strong of an impact one individual can have on another.”
Brian Sou writes, “My experience with Jane revealed to me that no matter what the situation, empathy and compassion are a must when treating patients.” He was attuned to her.
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In my essay “Unexpected” (Fall 2020 Intima), I looked out at the faces of medical assistants in the class I taught for medical interpreters. Their mastery of language interpretation in clinical settings was a required course for them. They were as far down the economic ladder of opportunity as I had ever been—I’d been lower—and I remembered my pride when many decades earlier I had lifted myself from unemployed book salesperson to medical assistant and was able to support my son and go back to school, eventually becoming an RN in PICU.
I knew who my students were because I’d been there. I was them and they were me, which makes so much sense if you are tracking origins of empathy.
“Patients are human beings.” Medical assistants are human beings.
My own sensibility in this case was different from Brian Sou’s, but it’s where empathy and attunement are born.
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When I intuitively recognize myself in my students, it illuminates the same bond as in Brian Sou’s resolve to be “sure not to discriminate or prematurely judge anyone that walks through the hospital doors.”
It is no leap of faith to say that Dr. Sou’s subsequent patients can be as grateful to Jane as Jane was that day at Bellevue for his compassion, the essential Art in the science of healthcare.
Catherine Klatzker is a writer and RN in Los Angeles, California, retired after twenty-two years in pediatric intensive care. Klatzker’s work appears in mental health anthologies from In Fact Books and from Lime Hawk Literary Arts Collective, as well as a range of other publications including Atticus Review, Please See Me and Intima Fall 2013 “Range of Vision,” Spring 2015 “What We See When We See Each Other” and Fall 2017 “Order.” Her memoir You Will Never Be Normal will be published by Stillhouse Press in May 2021.