Heart-wrenching photo of doctor crying goes viral...

[one_voice]

Outside of a Southern California hospital, an ER doctor is crouched down against a concrete wall grieving the loss of his 19-year-old patient. A paramedic snaps a photo of the tender scene. His coworker, a close friend of the doctor, posts the photo (with permission) online. Minutes after the photograph, the doctor returns to work “holding his head high.”

Thousands of people have commented on the web. In their own words, here is why the photo went viral:

1) Humans crave raw empathy. The photographer captures a poignant moment in a stoic profession that trains doctors to remain professionally distant. The voyeuristic photo reveals the emotional reality of doctoring—and a side of physicians that people don’t usually see—while uniting us all in our common humanity.

2) Unexpected death is universally heartbreaking. An ER doc, Smeee, writes:

When it comes to our work, nothing is harder—and I mean nothing—than telling a loved one that their family member is dead. Give me a bloody airway to intubate. Give me the heroin addict who needed IV access yesterday, but no one can get an IV. Give me the child with anaphylaxis. But don’t give me the unexpected death. . . . We can only do so much, and we can only hope to do our best. But it’s that moment, when you stop resuscitation, and you look around, you look down at your shoes to make sure there’s no blood on them before talking with family, you put your coat back on and you take a deep breath, because you know that you have to tell a family that literally the worst thing imaginable has happened. And it’s in that moment that I feel. And I feel like the guy in this picture.

3) Doctors are not allowed to grieve. A surgeon, TheGreatGator, shares, “We are never formally trained to deal with loss and/or with giving the worst news of a families life to them.” Another doctor, boldwhite, writes:

I know what that person is feeling. Yesterday one of my 17-month-old patients died. I was in the bathroom crying in private between patients several times yesterday. I’ve cried in stairwells and hallways. It eats at you. Life is very fragile and the pain of losing those we are trying to help becomes a scar that doesn’t go away. It has shaped who I am as a person.

4) In medicine, crying is unprofessional. That needs to change—now. A premedical student volunteering in the local ER tells me about a female physician who cried after losing a child. He thought her behavior was unprofessional. I asked him to consider, “Who did she harm by crying?” Meanwhile, a physician tells me she’s been cited for unprofessional conduct for crying at work. Her boss told her, “Unless you are dying, crying is unprofessional behavior and not to be tolerated.” Some physicians and young doctors-in-training are uncomfortable with tears. Grieving is a healthy reaction to sadness. Humans bond through shared pain. Please do not punish your colleagues for their willingness to be vulnerable with grief-stricken families. Real doctors cry.

*snip*

http://www.idealmedicalcare.org/blog/heart-wrenching-photo-of-doctor-crying-goes-viral-heres-why/?inf_contact_key=0f9e1d5735709df1c56f780f295098c186dee2749661c932adb5acf1ebc5a582

Good read.

[CTyankee]

1. That's so moving! You can't help feel for that poor doctor...

I'm glad he could express his grief.

[awoke_in_2003]

2. k&r

I don't know how people in the field do it- it would kill me.

[steve2470]

3. excellent article

I think the concepts of empathy and authenticity extend throughout the medical field and allied health professions. It's great to be objective, clinical and clear-thinking, but you're still human. You still have feelings and a connection, albeit a professional one, to your patient/client.

I've read EMT's only last X years, and I think this is part of it. They see human tragedy at its most raw every working day.

[BrotherIvan]

4. If someone in medicine could please explain why doctors and nurses

in hospitals and most especially ER, are given horrific 12-24 hour shifts? It seems like the physical toll along with the mental side would just wear you down. So many deaths are now attributed to medical accidents, such as giving the wrong drug or dose or other mixups. I can't think of anything that could be worse than a bunch of sleep deprived, stressed out people being caregivers. It has to be for profit, but part of me suspects it is "tradition," somehow proving you are superhuman or some kind of a cowboy, and it is the dumbest idea I can think of. Why on earth do they keep doing it?

From the article

9) If you don’t cry, you die. In my recent article, Physician Bullying: ‘Not Allowed to Cry’ I discuss unprocessed grief as a root cause of physician bullying, abuse, depression—even suicide. Both men I dated in med school died by suicide. Brilliant physicians. One overdosed at a medical conference. The other overdosed after work. In just over a year, we lost three physicians in my town to suicide. Gunshot wounds, mostly. One local doc lost seven colleagues to suicide—so far. Our profession punishes doctors for grieving and restricts the medical licenses of those seeking mental health care. So rather than process our grief, many docs turn to alcohol, drugs, firearms.

And yes, I respect this doctor very much for showing his feelings. I have met with some good doctors and some that were just awful. I have read books written by physicians that talk about how they wish they could show their emotions because it literally kills them to have to remain so distant in the face of grief and pain. And as family member and patients too would love it if a doctor didn't feel the need to act like a distant, superior God figure. Sure, everyone wants to have a doctor who is good in the trenches, but there should be some kind of balance.

[malaise]

5. K & R n/t

[hunter]

6. I've avoided those professions mostly, my wife and my sister do not.

In our family we call them "dead baby" days.

Doesn't even matter how old the "baby" is. Everyone was once someone's baby.

When I was a kid my mom worked on a suicide hotline and used to have days like that too.

Closest I've come to that sort of work is when family members would call me at work to tell me one of our hemophilia patients had died of AIDS. I used to carry the keys to a cabinet holding near a million dollars worth of "heat treated" and GMO synthetic Factor VIII.

[one_voice]

8. My mom and my aunt were both nurses...

My mom mostly worked in ICU we always knew when she had one of 'those days'. There were a lot of them. She would come home and cry her eyes out.

My aunt worked in a lot of Philly hospitals, ERs mostly. One they called little Vietnam. I don't know how she did it. The stories she told us. She cried a lot, too. She worked in a men's prison too, the horrors that she saw there.

Dead baby days--yes, that's it.

[C Moon]

7. Damn. That took the breath out of me. Sad.

[Revanchist]

9. I'm six weeks from my Master's in Health Administration

The only place I'm hesitant on applying to is the local children's hospital. I don't think I could see nothing but sick children everyday.

[840high]

10. I once saw an autopsy on

a baby - to this day the image is with me.

[Revanchist]

11. I'm sorry you had to go through that.

I'd rather try for a job in long-term care / assisted living. At least when a senior dies you can at least have the knowledge that they lived a full life, you can't use that mindset with a child.

[mnhtnbb]

14. I spent 10 years working in hospital management at a children's hospital.

Ironically, it was a visit to that same Children's Hospital when I was an undergrad
pre-physical therapy major that made me realize I couldn't clinically work with kids
on a regular basis...and that was back in the day (early 70's) before sports PT might have been
an option vs working with adults or kids.
I ended up going to grad school at UCLA in Hospital Administration and then...
working at that same Children's Hospital. It never bothered me at all.

[greymattermom]

12. my nephew is an ER nurse

There was a horrific fire that killed several children in the city where he usually lives. He was on shift and had children die in his arms. He loves the excitement of the job but is a traveling nurse, so he sees many communities and isn't attached to any of them. He takes off the whole summer every year.

[OldRedneck]

13. An EMT's view

I'm an Advanced Life Support EMT with a rural Virginia rescue squad. From time to time we arrive on a scene to find cardiac arrest, pulmonary embolism, respiratory arrest, extremely low blood glucose level, heart attack, massive stroke, brain bleed, severe trauma or other life-threatening condition. We throw everything we have at the patient and -- in EMS jargon -- "apply high-flow diesel" all the way to the ER. I have lost patients in the home, on the roadside, in the back of the ambulance, and at the front door of the ER. This doc said exactly the way we feel -- it's just a huge emptiness and silence while everyone asks themselves "Could we have done more?"

[Beaverhausen]

15. Thank you for what you do.