In physician Vanessa Van Doren’s soul-wrestling essay “The Right Choice” (Fall 2020 Intima), she writes “residency quickly hammers us into efficient machines that let nothing—sleep deprivation, grief, personal or human circumstances —hinder our ability to execute tasks.”

I could relate. After the long hours and intense learning curve of my Emergency Medicine residency, I had become one of those efficient robots who could solve medical puzzles and save lives, but I felt empty, disconnected—the classic symptoms of burn-out. I was once a wide-eyed, empathetic intern constantly criticized for trying to solve their patient’s chronic issues. I remember one attending saying, “Figure out the least amount of things you need to do to rule out an emergency.” I see now that he was trying to teach me efficiency. And as I got better at the game of doing the least amount so I could treat the most patients, any real empathy had evaporated. There simply wasn’t time or space. No one ever told me anymore “Stop talking to the patients so much!” Of course I used sympathetic words and held my patients’ hands, I’m sure they couldn’t tell the difference between my clinical empathy and my real empathy. But I could.

So when I became an attending physician, I decided that one patient every shift would get the real me. I would stop thinking about all the labs I had to check and procedures for other patients I needed to do. I wouldn’t try to rush the patient’s story. I would stop and be present and listen. It is always that patient who I think about driving home, the encounter that makes me feel like I am making a difference. Similarly for Van Doren, she doesn’t remember the life-saving medication order or running another code, she remembers sharing her humanity with her patient’s wife. She remembers connecting.

I describe how it felt to bring down my protective wall and share joy with someone in my essay “A Shot of Perspective” (Spring 2021 Intima) after an immeasurably difficult year working through the pandemic. My hope is that other providers who are running on empty can fill their tank with connection.

Jordana Kritzer, MD is a graduate of Washington University in St. Louis where she received her BA in Anthropology and Theater. During medical school at SUNY Downstate, Dr. Kritzer created many storytelling opportunities including Stories Forum Initiative, “The Vagina Monologues” and the annual “Stories from the Wards.”

She completed her Emergency Medicine residency training at Jacobi Medical Center/Montefiore Medical Center in the Bronx. She is a board certified Assistant Professor at Albert Einstein College of Medicine where she teaches classes on clinical empathy and communication within the doctor-patient relationship. Dr. Kritzer works at Montefiore’s Wakefield campus as an attending physician, caring for patients and teaching residents.

She was named Emergency Medicine Physician of the Year in 2015. Her Field Notes essay “A Shot of Perspective” appears in the Spring 2021 Intima.