I volunteer at a primary care clinic a couple evenings a month. It's a wonderful opportunity to keep my clinical skills afloat and always work with really awesome attendings who are passionate about teaching and the mission of this clinic.
At my last clinic, we met a patient who urgently wanted to be tested for STIs, distraught over the prospect that he may have given his partner an STI. Between this immediate issue and his many other life stressors, the patient was having a very hard time coping. Given his emotional state, the attending asked to take the lead with the patient. What I witnessed was a model of how to handle this kind of encounter. First, the physician heard the patient out. Rather than launching into a counseling session on STIs, what the patient really needed that evening was to vent. Then, she cited that millions of other patients have STIs and that when her patients who have a STI speak with their sexual partners, they do x, y, z. She completely normalized the situation and made the patient feel like 1) my doctor has seen other patients with this exact problem and 2) thereby, I am not alone with this issue - in fact x MILLION Americans deal with this! Finally, this physician encouraged the patient to page her if his situation ever overwhelmed him, effectively conveying, "I am always available to you and I will help." The entire encounter lasted perhaps 10 minutes but the patient left feeling visibly relieved. These types of patient-doctor interactions remind me of why I went into medicine.
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