Indexing Title: CLEYSONs Medical Anecdotal Report  [04-3]

MAR Title: Who would tell?

Date of Medical Observation: May 22, 2004

 Narration:       

           One Saturday afternoon, as we go about our duties and treating some patients at the emergency room, I heard the noise of the stretcher being pushed,  it seems to be in a hurry,  that  gave me an idea that someone’s  needing our immediate attention. When it arrived at our emergency room, I saw a girl, in her teens, lying motionless on the stretcher, we made our first assessments and found out that she has no pulse nor she was breathing. We started CPR and gave her supportive medicines, but she did not survive. After 30 minutes, I pronounced her as dead.

            She was just 16 years old, a third year high school student, who was riding a scooter with her brother when she was hit by a 10 wheeler truck. No one at the emergency room knows her. So we took the liberty to look at her things and look for someone to call. Now the questions came to me 1) who would tell this young girl’s relatives of her death and 2) should we inform them through the telephone or should we let them come to the hospital before we inform them of her death? After a few minutes of contemplating, I’ve felt that it is my responsibility to tell her relatives about her. I called her aunt and  told her that  her niece met an accident, but  I couldn’t bring myself to inform her that she was already with the Lord, I was so relieved when she just asked me where to go and that she will inform her relatives about her and hang-up.

Insights (discovery, stimulus, REINFORCEMENT)

           Being a doctor is coupled with great responsibility.  As a physician, even though we have just treated a patient for a few minutes, he is our responsibility.  It is our duty to give them the best treatment they deserve. And it is also our task to inform their relatives about their condition, even if it will make us the deliverer of terrible news. But in doing so, we must choose the right words, the right time and right place in telling them the death of a love one.