Making a Pivot

For most of my adult life, I’ve dedicated myself to emergency medicine, being there when others needed me most, rushing into the unknown. I’ve taught CPR, ACLS, and EKG interpretation, placed breathing tubes, started IVs, shocked hearts, and stopped bleeding. But after more than a decade in the trenches, I’m choosing a new path.

In January, I returned from vacation to rotate in a practice that focused on Osteopathic manipulation. The doctor I worked with dedicated his practice and his training to use his hands to diagnose and treat pain and dysfunction in people’s bodies. Every DO student learns these skills, but few continue to practice them after school. Even fewer dedicate their practice to this one-hundred year old art.

What I saw in four weeks were things that could only be described as miraculous. Multiple patients came in with pain that had lasted for years, been resistant to treatment from of some of medicine’s smartest minds. These were people who couldn’t stand without assistance and were now jumping in and out of chairs with ease. Not one patient was dissatisfied, upset, or rude. Most were very grateful for the time, care, and skill they experienced. Many even referred friends and family to be seen.

Before walking into every room, my doctor would take a moment and give me a synopsis of the patient we were about to see. But, unlike medicine or surgery where a presentation starts with a complaint, he started most stories with “I’ve been seeing him/her/her mother/brother/uncle for years”. The social and interpersonal parts of the patient’s experience were far more important than their diagnosis. You could tell these patients were his friends.

And boy, did they have weird problems. Rare conditions were very common in his practice. He knew about diagnoses and treatment plans that some other physicians would say didn’t exist. His explanation: by the time most patients come to him, they’ve tried everything else. Sure, OMT would not fix many of their conditions, but he could help their symptoms and give them relief from their pain in ways no one else could.

That’s what I want from practice.

I want to spend the time patients deserve to get to know them, their problems, and who they are. I want to touch patients, because the body says so much more about what’s wrong than the brain realizes. I want to offer a skill so rare, more doctors do brain surgery than manipulation. And I want to focus on skills that truly make a difference to how people experience and live their lives.

This will be very different than emergency medicine, cardiology, or any of the other life paths I once considered. But I know this is what I want to do.

Now I just need to get there.