I remember. It is a gorgeous summer day as the sunlight streaks through the redwood canopy. My grip clenches the dangling rope. My stance wobbles on the itty-bitty circular disk. I am uncertain. Teeter-tottering, I plot my next move. It does not happen. I plummet. My harness transforms into a bucket swing, saving me from the forest floor. I sway in the pleasant breeze. I cannot finish the Level 1 grapevine traversal. Or can I?

Fast forward one year. It is another gorgeous summer day as the sunlight streaks through the redwood canopy. This time I am stronger. Last year, I was weightlifting an empty trap bar, a specialized barbell for deadlifts. Back then, I did not know what that was. Now, I do, and I am deadlifting 130 pounds. This year, I connect one rope and disk to the next, steadily making it through the Level 2 grapevine traversal. This is Mount Hermon Aerial Adventure. My patient told me about this Bay Area ropes course.

Lessons from the exam room

I had never met her before. We exchanged pleasantries about our weekends. Hers was a five-star Yelp review of Mount Hermon; mine unremarkable. After completing her routine gynecology exam, I was intrigued and booked that first unsuccessful adventure at the ropes course. I learned from her how physically strong I can become.

I was taught what we can learn from patients in medical school and mastered collecting patient histories, critically appraising literature, and performing research to optimize therapies. Medical school, however, did not prepare me for these quiet moments where I learn more about myself than I do about symptoms, illnesses, and treatments.

This article itself is the product of a quiet moment during a colposcopy, the follow-up procedure for abnormal cervical cancer screening. Distracting my patient from the colposcopy, we chatted about her career. She is a freelance author. I inquired how she knows what to write and where to publish. She shared her strategy of making numerous submissions in anticipation of multiple rejections. This does not discourage her, as each turndown results in the most appropriate readership. Her sheer dismissal of rejection redefined my perception of failure.

Strength and failure in practice

From my patients, I learned how to become physically stronger, and that failure does not expose weakness; it optimizes the final outcome. This, in turn, has elevated my medical practice. Motivated to succeed at Mount Hermon like my routine gynecology patient, I started weightlifting. The strength training improved my surgical skills and understanding of the pelvic floor. As such, I no longer feel the grind of grueling operating days and recommend specific exercises to treat urinary incontinence, dyspareunia, and pregnancy round ligament pain.

My colposcopy patient encouraged me to try novel endeavors I had previously dismissed due to the fear of failure. No longer worried about repetitive rejections, I will submit my work to a variety of avenues, which has resulted in scientific abstract publications, poster presentations, and teaching workshops. Setting aside embarrassment, I will converse with Spanish-speaking patients in their native tongue. Despite my novice lingo, they are more willing to accept my diagnoses and therapies than if I spoke in my advanced English. Serendipitously, weightlifting is based on failure: performing repetitions until another one cannot be performed with the appropriate form. In this form of failure, I have graduated from Mount Hermon Level 1 grapevine traversal to Level 2.

The physician transformed

These quiet moments absent of symptoms, illnesses, and treatments expand the medical school definition of a physician. I am strong enough to succeed at the Level 2 ropes course and willing to fail at Level 3 the next time I go to Mount Hermon. And this elevates my ability to transform symptoms into diagnoses and research into therapies. This is what my patients have whimsically taught me outside of formalized medical education, and I look forward to learning more as my career progresses.

Samantha Fernandes is an obstetrician-gynecologist.