After a June 2020 piece in the Baltimore Sun marvels at medical students providing holistic care to Covid patients, a local nurse explains that this extraordinary care innovation has actually been at the core of nursing practice forever.
June 30, 2020 – – Today The Baltimore Sun published nurse Maureen Fitzpatrick’s letter in response to a recent news article on the efforts of two Johns Hopkins medical students to improve the care environment of Covid patients through things like music and better connectivity to families. Fitzpatrick was happy to see such efforts, but she also pointed out that nurses have been providing such holistic care as part of their regular practice model for many decades. And, she explained, this might be more commonly understood if nurses received the kind of attention that physicians do. In particular, hospitals tend to offer, and the media tends to use, only physicians for expert commentary. We thank the Sun for publishing the letter, although even the way the paper framed it raised the same issues. The editors gave the letter the strong headline quoted above. But in between the headline and the letter, they placed an enormous photo – not of nurses, but one of the Hopkins medical students, lest anyone forget what really mattered. We thank Fitzpatrick for her strong advocacy and urge the Sun to do more to highlight the specific actions of direct care nurses in caring for patients.
See Maureen Fitzpatrick’s letter to the editor “Looking for empathy in medicine? Start with nurses,” published June 30, 2020 in the Baltimore Sun.
Good read. Often, nurses’ efforts were not recognized by many when nurses are the ones who always check the patient from time to time. The recognition should not only be for doctors or high officials but also for the staff like nurses and other healthcare professionals.
You bet Nurses get patients to confide often valuable health information that needs to be known to protect n improve their health…. patients seem to trust Nurses and find it easier to talk n trust them…
Hi, I cannot access either the original article or the reply. Would it be possible to share it?
Johns Hopkins medical students help coronavirus patients and their families stay in touch
By MIKE KLINGAMAN
BALTIMORE SUN |
JUN 28, 2020 AT 5:00 AM
The woman felt helpless.
Her husband, in his 60s, lay in Johns Hopkins Hospital attached to a ventilator and battling the coronavirus. He couldn’t speak; she couldn’t visit. How could she give comfort from a distance and assure him that his loved ones cared?
Enter Ruoxi Yu, 26, a Hopkins medical student who this spring participated in a pilot program in which she served as an advocate for families of pandemic patients. For two weeks in April, as part of her training, Yu spoke daily with the patient’s wife, for up to 30 minutes, learning his habits and the family’s concerns before passing both on to caregivers in the hospital.
At the family’s request, Yu had their photos placed at his bedside. She made sure his phone was always charged so that his wife could call three times a day. Never mind that the patient couldn’t answer, said Yu: “To the family, it was important that he knew they were thinking of him.”
It’s all part of an innovative Hopkins project designed to boost the empathetic and communicative skills of tomorrow’s caregivers, while allaying the fears of families barred from visiting the sick during the health crisis.
“The goal is for each student to be the point person for communication with the family,” said Dr. Sarina Sahetya, assistant professor of medicine and faculty co-leader of the project. “Listening is essential, something many doctors are bad at doing. Hopefully this has been a beneficial experience that [students] will take forward with them in whatever path they go.”
Yu was one of two medical students to kick off the program; Lauren Claus, 25, was the other. Each reached out to the families of between six and 12 COVID patients, a number of whom were on ventilators. Some have recovered; others succumbed.
“We never provided clinical hope. Nothing we could say could make it better. It was more about listening to the families’ thoughts,” Claus said. “It was helpful for us to provide a platform for them to share their sadness and anxieties.”
Any personal nuggets they gleaned might be relayed to caregivers for banter with patients with whom they could converse.
Ask my husband his thoughts on the NFL draft, a wife said. One man asked if his partner, a Spanish-speaking patient in her 20s, could have Latino Christian music piped into her room. She got it every day thereafter. Families offered up patients’ religious preferences, thankful that hospital chaplains could bless them, if only from the hallways.
“We served as conduits between family and staff,” Yu said.
The experience was a positive for all involved, Claus added.
“We definitely took away lessons that will help us, clinically, in the future,” she said.
Maureen Fitzpatrick’s letter:
Looking for empathy in medicine? Start with nurses | READER COMMENTARY
FOR THE BALTIMORE SUN |
JUN 30, 2020 AT 2:06 PM
Regarding Mike Klingaman’s recent article, “Johns Hopkins medical students help coronavirus patients and their families stay in touch” (June 28), I’m all for increasing the empathy and listening skills of young physicians. Who isn’t? Nevertheless, it is frustrating to think that Hopkins gets noticed for suddenly inculcating a whole-patient approach when this has always been a primary feature of nursing practice.
It’s hard not to see this as, yet again, a case of physicians getting the credit for nurses’ contribution. Nurses don’t work for glory or power, which is generally supported by hospitals typically choosing physicians to represent in front of the media, and the media pursuing physician experts when reporting on nearly any health care topic. Moreover, we certainly don’t work for big bucks. Primary care nurse practitioners, for example, can expect to earn half what physicians earn in spite of performing the same role.
I’m ironically glad to hear that medical students are developing the skill of listening, but let’s not fall all over ourselves with excitement when 4 million nurses make no big deal of listening every day.
Maureen Fitzpatrick, M.S.N., Baltimore