Patient-First Language

Every photo has a background. It holds the details hiding behind the main attraction: people walking by, engaged in their own conversations; piles of mail that have not been tidied; dishes in a sink; other people’s beach towels; storefronts and parking meters. These are the parts of a photograph you did not intend to capture, the accidental participants in your memory. This is the place where I exist.

Longevity in medicine necessitates some degree of desensitization. This is part of how we grow. It’s essential. This evolution, however, can come with a cost. With our competence comes the insidious erosion of empathy that creeps in, hand-in-hand with our competence, quietly, relentlessly, and destructively.