Apr 5, 2021
"Sure, she wanted the catheter out, but the most dramatic thing I removed that day was fear and confusion. Suddenly, she had become part of her own care."
Jonathan Steinmetz, senior resident of internal medicine at UConn Health, recalls an interaction where communication was key to empowering a patient's sense of purpose in managing her own health care and quality of life.
This essay was published in the Teaching and Learning Moments column in the March 2021 issue of Academic Medicine. Read the essay at academicmedicine.org.