Some Ways I’ve Made a Difference For Patients This Week, To Remind Myself That I’m Not a Bad Doctor

1. The patient I saw on a home visit and fought to get an ambulance to bring him to hospital, because I was concerned that he had bowel obstruction and his wife couldn’t drive him in. Spoiler alert: He had bowel obstruction.
2. The 1 year old I saw in clinic and referred urgently to Children’s A&E because they had an injury that didn’t add up with the explanation given. Safeguarding monitoring has now been put in place.
3. The patient who was embarrassed about her prolapse and cried because she was worried it looked “really bad”. My clinic overran by half an hour because I spent extra time reassuring and explaining it all to her, because she needed more time to settle for an examination of the prolapse. She was very grateful and shook my hand at the end to say thanks.
4. The teenager I saw for a follow up of her heavy, painful periods, who got embarrassed when her Mum told me that she said I was her favourite doctor because her periods were the lightest and least painful they’d ever been since starting the medication I prescribed.
5. The patient who made an appointment to speak to someone about her fear of dying, because she’s recently been referred on a 2 week wait pathway for suspected endometrial cancer. I sat with her as she cried, and she was grateful that I had asked her about her children, because no one else had considered how scary the thought of leaving a 7 year old and 11 year old without their Mum would be.

Today was not a good day at the office, but I am not a bad doctor, and though some days of GP training are harder than others and I feel like my brain will burst from all the things I need to know, God is good, and tomorrow is another day.