And slowly, I see why it might be easier to just make phone calls from the safety of one’s home than to be witness to a seemingly unending stream of medical misfortunes. … I realize that their puzzling reaction to illness is not so much selfishness as self-insulation.
—Dr. Ranjana Srivastava, from her essay “The Loneliness of Visiting” in this week’s edition of The New England Journal of Medicine
“Hospital Visit” (photo: Bart Heird/Flickr, cc by-nc-nd 2.0)
A Doctor in the Waiting Room
by Nancy Rosenbaum, producer
When a close friend of Dr. Srivastava suffers a stroke, the medical oncologist from Melbourne confronts the difficulty and helplessness of being a hospital visitor. The experience makes her more empathetic towards her patients’ absent loved ones who visit sparingly.
