Starting a family or becoming a caregiver to a child during a medical career often comes with a well-known myriad of challenges. However, for many, it also comes with meaningful and lasting positive changes to medical practice.
To further explore this idea and how it relates specifically to PEM, I reached out to current PEM attending and fellow physicians who responded anonymously about how becoming a parent or caregiver impacted their practice. Below are quotes from respondents sorted into overarching themes.
Understanding Illness Course
“…appreciate how children can look differently on the same day they are sick. It has changed me in the sense that I want to dive deeper into expected course of illness, discharge instruction, and return precautions with parents to empower them during their child’s illness.”
Increased Trust
“ I find that they trust what I say more when I tell them I am a parent or this is what I would do if it were my kid.”
Increased Empathy
“Much more compassionate and able to relate to parents’ frustrations with ‘not an emergency’ complaints.”
“Strengthened my ability to empathize and to meet families where they are emotionally, particularly during moments of stress or vulnerability.”
“I also empathize much more with parents who don’t know how many wet diapers have occurred in 24 hours exactly because there’s a lot. I am also much more understanding of first-time parents who come in with anxiety about baby behaviors.”
“Since becoming a parent, I spend more time on reassurance and anticipatory guidance, and I approach conversations with families with a deeper appreciation for their fears, uncertainty, and decision making burden.”
Practical Advice
“Much more sympathetic to seemingly mundane illnesses. And really understand the troubles about giving meds!”
So what is the take-away here? Increased connection to patients builds greater empathy. Approaching practice this way – parent-to-parent, human-to-human – makes us better doctors.
Dr. Aimee Belak, MD, is a 3rd year Pediatric Emergency Medicine Fellow at Cohen Children’s Medical Center. She can be reached at abelak@northwell.edu.
