Attachment to patients

[alison]

Luckily, dh's specialty is healthy moms and babies (usually, not always!), and we see them around town. He also gets "love letters" occasionally--you'd be surprised how many he gets from women who were so happy with their epidurals.

[weeniegeniewife]

When my friend's 3-year-old died last year from a rare immunological disorder, all his docs and nurses came to his funeral, and a few even spoke. It was very touching.

[diggitydot]

Culture really varies by specialty and also varies depending on unit or practice.

I agree. When our friend's son passed away, it seemed like all of his docs and nurses from Doernbecher's were there. They were really amazing.

DH gets attached to some patients. He frequently treats entire families and gets to know them very well. Add into the equation that we live in a CRAZY rural area so these are our neighbors and sometimes our friends.

[houseelf]

Generally, no.

Culture really varies by specialty and also varies depending on unit or practice.

REally, my DH sees them briefly while their awake, cuts on them, sees the parents afterwards, and then has a brief clinic visit at some later interval. Kids heal quickly and change so rapidly that he can rarely identify them at reunions later on.

Contrast this with burn surgery, the subspecialty that DH would have chosen if peds didn't work out. This subspecialty tends to create much more protracted relationships with patients and families. In fact, one of the things that he loved about burn was the longer patient relationships.

With all of this being said, I will tell you that some of his patients' stories haunt him for a long time. He still talks about the toddler who shot in the liver by the his twin when they discovered their police father's hand gun under the bed, the family who accidentally ran over their three year old with an SUV, and other equally horrific things that has happened to some of his patients.