A colleague of mine was recently questioning her capabilities having lost yet another patient who had arrived nearly lifeless after being shot. She was despondent over the nation’s overall complacency about our gun violence epidemic giving her far too many opportunities to fail or succeed as a trauma surgeon. Truthfully, neither quick, decisive action nor expert surgical skill was enough to repair that much damage. Not in the hands of any trauma surgeon.
As trauma surgeons, we bring everything we have: Every ounce of energy and drive, countless years of specialized training, and an ever expanding armamentarium of medical technology to fix broken bodies — to our work but sometimes we simply feel like failures, both unable to save our patients and unable to move the dial on policies that might ameliorate gun violence.
Here are the words of support that I offered to my friend: a compassionate, highly skilled trauma surgeon who without hesitation took a hemorrhaging gunshot wound victim to the OR to try to save his life:
“The grief is understandable. For your patients. For your community. For our society. You have a skill set that makes you brave enough to even try, my friend. As a trauma surgeon when you hear audible hemorrhage you run toward it, just like the police run into the gunfire or the firefighters run into the flames. Each and every patient is lucky to have you and your strength; their families will be grateful for your efforts and empathy no matter the outcome. Don’t be too hard on yourself.”
Having been raised in a culture of morbidity and mortality conferences where we scrutinize every decision and every action preceding a death or complication, having a chosen specialty whose goal is to salvage badly damaged bodies, and living in a world where these patients keep appearing in our trauma bays even when we speak up about gun violence, this self-doubt is common among us.
But sometimes we just needed to be reminded we are heroes who have chosen to run toward the audible bleeding so we can get up and go back to work the next day.
Heena P. Santry is a surgeon who blogs at Hot Heels, Cool Kicks, & a Scalpel. She can be reached on Twitter @SurgeoninHeels.
Image credit: Shutterstock.com
