Vol. 19 No. 1 (2021)
Reflections

Not Knowing What to Do: A Narrative Reflection on a Medical Student’s First Patient Encounter

Emmanuel Adams-Gelinas
McGill Medicine
white and blue ambulance van traveling on road

Published 2021-03-02

Keywords

  • physicianship,
  • medical humanities,
  • Narrative Medicine

How to Cite

1.
Adams-Gelinas E. Not Knowing What to Do: A Narrative Reflection on a Medical Student’s First Patient Encounter. McGill J Med [Internet]. 2021 Mar. 2 [cited 2025 Oct. 7];19(1). Available from: https://mjm.mcgill.ca/article/view/843

Abstract

Medicine, though fundamentally a scientific discipline, is the art of transferring experimentally derived knowledge onto the care of patients. The clinician’s role is to master precisely that process. Therefore, in addition to acquiring a strong command of the biomedical sciences, integral to the clinician’s professional duty is the development of his or her identity as a healer.

 

This first-person narrative essay explores a clinical encounter between myself, a first-year medical student with very limited clinical experience, and an elderly man whom I found collapsed on the sidewalk. Fumbling in my clinical decision-making, I settle on simply holding the man’s hand to reassure him that his ambulance is on its way. Later, after reflecting on the event and obsessing over my blunders and hesitations, I finally recognize that the simple act of holding his hand was essential to my role as a future physician and healer, rather than implying clinical inadequacy.

Downloads

Download data is not yet available.

References

  1. Lown B. The Lost Art of Healing. New York: Ballantine Books; 1999.