A memorable patient: Effective communication

Autor: David Bennett-Jones
Rok vydání: 2001
Předmět:
Zdroj: BMJ. 323:837-837
ISSN: 1468-5833
0959-8138
DOI: 10.1136/bmj.323.7317.837
Popis: I never met my memorable patient. Indeed, he presented before I was born and, for all I know, he may have died before I even graduated. I was a house officer when my father, then a practising consultant physician and now retired, told me the story of the patient's unusual presentation and diagnosis, from some 30 years previously. The patient, a tram driver in Liverpool, had been observed to struggle ineffectually with a simple task while working on the tramlines immediately outside the city's Adelphi Hotel. A smartly dressed stranger came up to the tram driver and presented him with a slip of paper which had a single word written on it, and he instructed the man to take the piece of paper to his doctor. This encounter occurred in the 1950s during a meeting of the Association of Physicians being held in Liverpool, when many of the foremost physicians of the time were staying at the Adelphi Hotel. A few days later, my father happened to be working in the clinic to which the patient presented, and he noted the clinical features of puffy face, dry skin, delayed reflexes, and mental lassitude. A month later, after he started taking thyroid extract, the life of the patient had been transformed. The single word on the slip of paper? Myxoedema, of course. Why so memorable? I was taught not only the importance of simple observation in making a diagnosis, but also that the value of a communication bears little relation to its length.
Databáze: OpenAIRE
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