Creative Enquiry: Mutual Sighting

This piece is about perspectives.

By letting ourselves be seen, by being truly honest and open with a patient, I believe you will provide a platform which patients will feel more able to allow themselves and their worries to truly be seen. And hence allow us to get to the bottom of the true problem in hand and provide the best care, ‘the clinician must not only see, but be seen, and by doing so, enable herself to see even more clearly’[i]. However, is it emotionally feasible to open yourself up in this way with every patient? Perhaps not. I believe that it could be if you are aware of the extent to which you are exposing yourself. Also by opening ourselves up to the patients we may always be reminded of the reason to enjoy and practice medicine, ‘In learning to talk to the patients the doctor may talk himself back into loving the work…by letting the sick man into his heart…they can share, as few others can, the wonder, terror, and exaltation’ i.

I believe that when practising medicine we must realise we are listening to our patient’s stories through our own experiences. The article Narrative humility touches on this idea of reflexivity, that ‘our own role in the story, our expectations’ and assumptions can alter the way that ‘the story attracts or repels us because it reminds us of any number of personal stories’i. I think this is such an important thing to keep in mind. We must remember that everyone is an individual and everyone’s experiences are inherently different even when there are similarities.

The patient prospective of being a seer not objective was highlighted to me in the group we had at Callington Road hospital. Fiona told us of how patients can come in with a problem and often it takes time and talking with another person to see the problem in a different prospective. By doing this they can actually tackle the real issue in hand, for example it’s not the OCD that is the problem it is what has caused the OCD to develop. When patients can then see the real issue that is when they can make a decision whether they wish to address that issue and decide to get better. This is the main reason for this piece of art, that when looking with another we can see with a new perspective and we can then start to heal. I played with the familiar image of Rubin’s vase to portray this idea of how having two perspectives on the same thing can show two very different things.

[i] DasGupta S. Narrative humility. The Lancet. 2008 Mar 22;371(9617):980-1. p.981