I’m sitting here writing this at 1:16am. I’ve worked 2 weeks straight and thru labor day weekend on my medicine sub-I. Tonight’s entry is on “trust.” I am realizing that in one’s journey to become a physician, one has to be ever vigilant in being suspicious. Whether it be a patient who sells morphine tablets to other patients in the hospital or a cheating wife who brings home a nice STD to their husband. As clinicians, we hold the dirty little secrets to humanity’s immorality but are conditioned to be ever vigilant in maintaining confidentiality. This results in the problem of bearing a million little secrets on oneself, which is taxing on the mind. Over the past few months, I’ve learned to cope the only way I know how…to become hardened and numb to it all. Numb in the sense that almost every person gets a tox screen ordered to look for drug abuse and infidelity is always a consideration when things just don’t add up. Does this mean that I have become uncaring? On the contrary, it makes me feel more caring and appreciative for the others who play life by the rules. But the path to becoming a physician robs you of your innocence, particularly in your clinical years, molding you into a more jaded and street savvy individual. Why? Because it is necessary to be able to provide the best care for all of your patients. It is necessary to maintain the confidentiality that physicians provide so that the bit of truth that is divulged in a patient’s history can be used for the betterment of the patient without their fear of repercussions. The knowledge of the crap society is capable of is the pressure that refines our soft carbon newbieness into our sharp diamond-like precision.

Just remember, next time your physician is a smidgen short with you, we do not intend to be. We just live with the lies of many and the truth of few…and without the ability to ever tell who those who it matters to. Now that’s deep.

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