His email started out in a straightforward way, as most of the communications I receive from trainees do. He identified himself as being in his final year of medical school and asked about spending time rounding with me on our inpatient leukemia service. But then he went into territory I didn't anticipate.
"I am going into surgery and feel underprepared in managing patients with terminal diagnoses,'" he wrote. "I was hoping to spend this elective learning about this as it would be useful to my career in the future."
Medical students usually don't enter surgical fields for a love of terminal illnesses. Most are attracted by an approach to medical conditions typified by the braggadocio-laced line, "A chance to cut is a chance to cure." Surgery remains the most effective treatment for the majority of cancers. But leukemia, similar to other hematologic malignancies, is not a cancer for which surgery is a useful therapy, since its source, the bone marrow, can't be removed with a scalpel.
I respected him for recognizing that his education was deficient, and also suspected that whatever event had occurred leading to his request must have been traumatizing. He was asking to spend some of his precious remaining time as a medical student taking care of patients who would never be a part of his future practice. I invited him to join me.
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https://www.nytimes.com/2019/04/24/well/live/getting-to-know-our-patients.html
