Patient Confidence

Sitting at a cafe by the waterfront in the morning is quite a luxury. A lone rusty boat anchored a stone-throw off the sandy beach, buoying up and down with the waves. The wooden jetty lies alongside the boat keeping each other company. The lavender-turquoise coloured azure wash-painted on top of the deep indigo blue-green background fabric, carelessly brushed into a vague horizon. The flaring ball of fire reflecting off the morning dew on the tips of grass blades, unthawing the morning mist and my frozen limbs. The sea, the harsh mistress, is feeling tranquil this morning, not a line of white wrinkle on her blue blue cheek.

Note: I forgot to bring my camera, stupid me.

Albeit the plain foamy latte (Eugh), I was feeling ready for the 4th day at the rural GP practice. The previous few days had me prepared, always prepared to call for help: “I think this is what is happening, but let’s call the doctor back in the room and see what he thinks”. Not this morning, my confidence was about to take a huge wedgie from the meanest kid in town and then hang upside down in a bin rolling down a steep street. The first course was a lady who came in for scripts, just before she left, she asked if her seborrhoeic keratosis and a sizable haemangioma need to be cut out, they were annoying as they get caught by bra strap and get itchy. “they are benign and don’t need to be excised, but if its causing you grief, we can do it for you”. As always my enthusiasm took the better of me, and I volunteered eagerly as I’ve been dying to do something hands on. Plus I think I did a pretty good job on the last two that I’ve done. “What am I, your guinea pig now?” “Will it hurt?” she had a serious look of do-you-know-what-you’re-doing on her trusting face, “I should come back in a couple weeks time when you are not here”. I backed down and said no more. Before she left she said “I will try and book a time next week so you can practice”, I replied “you don’t have to”.

The next patient looked like an old sea captain. After my GP introduced me as Shawn the med student, his widened eyes stared at me in disbelief as if I was a ghost. In a way I was as foreign to his mind as a ghost. Because he lifted his walking cane, pointed it at me and in an astonished tone gasped to his wife, “Does he look like an English person to you? Your name is Shawn? You don’t look bloody like an English, you are an Asian, why is your name Shawn? Where are you from?” Quite taken aback by how rude he is, I didn’t know what to say, I had seen nothing like it. He ranted on for another minute or two, and every so often during the consultation, he’d confront me with his stares questioning my purpose in that room. I can’t very well remember the rest of consultation or the two that followed because my mind had blanked out. It was awkward and I must have looked quite shocked, because his wife was rather embarrassed and started making small talks with me, the rest blurred.

There are more than 1.5 billion of us on the face of this planet, grandpa.

I must have been sensitised because throughout the afternoon I’d noticed people’s reactions when I go to the patient waiting area to call patients in, I had patients question my ability to give flu shots twice, and were told that last time a student did it, he bled all over his shirt. It’s a simple IM shot, a blind-folded monkey (me) could do it, and the monkey did it 12 times yesterday you jerks! Yesterday a woman was giving reviews of the doctors she’d seen at the hospital, “Dr. So-and-so was excellent, he couldn’t get an operating theatre for me, but by the end of the day, he was so apologetic that he came around to see me and told the nurses to get the poor lady some food (she’d been fasting all day). Dr. Blah was pretty good too, I liked him. But I don’t like the Asian doctor, he couldn’t get blood off me arm, and had to use an ultrasound to get the needle in the right place...” She had the BMI of at least 40, if angels were to be banished from the sky, she’d be it, for the sin of gluttony, and the skin folds draped down on her back could be mistaken for wings anyday. She remembered other doctors by name, but the Asian doctor by his colour.

note: I took the blood of an obese lady successfully in first go at the end of the day, small victory.

There's something about me that doesn't inspire much confidence in patients. I don’t have much confidence in myself most days. Patients take one look at you and those splits of seconds decide how much they confide in you. Country folks being honest and frank they are, definitely let you know about it.

If I meet another person that judges my competency by my skin pigmentation, I’m gonna fucking lose it...