Jun 15, 2020
"I turned around to perform a different kind of survey—one that had no checklist because it was never really complete. ... For the first time, I appreciated his life, not his illness or the data we tracked along with it."
Dr. Spencer Keil remembers a mentor who reminded him that caring for patients is about more than checking boxes. It's about getting to know a patient as a person outside a diagnosis.
This essay was published in the Teaching and Learning Moments column in the June 2020 issue of Academic Medicine. Read the essay at academicmedicine.org.