Compassion Fatigue

Lakshmi gave every appearance of being perfect. Her marks in undergraduate medical school were exceptional. She was intelligent, well prepared, charming and efficient. Always beautifully dressed, her hair was professionally blown out, her nails never ragged or chipped. Unlike the other often frazzled and sleep-deprived members of her resident cohort, she never looked flustered, exhausted and overworked.

Where do I start to tell you about my best friend Sam? I've known him all of my life. While we've always lived apart, he's had a major influence on me and in many ways has shaped my life, making me who I am today. I know, I know, it sounds like hyperbole, but let me explain.

I wouldn’t have thought anything less of my day if the porters had arrived, not said a word and just moved around the various beds and wheelchairs, with us as patients in them, from the required point A to point B. But in the Civic day surgery unit, porters are not just porters, they are Walt Disney magical carpet ride directors.

The letter, signed by 200 medical doctors and scientists, said the pandemic is spiraling out of control in Manitoba because case numbers have been rising and outbreaks have been occurring at long-term care homes.

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I get to thinking there's at least an opportunity, if not an explicit purpose, in our trajectory toward senescence. On bad days, it freaks me out and I enter my default existentialism that seems to have coloured most of my life, from frantically saving the dying insects on the surface of my childhood pool to contemplating the spirited air that must surround the hallways of our local hospice and its quiet lakeside dock.

We’ve been getting by with virtual care, and during the pandemic, it may be the best option possible given the many constraints we are facing. But we need to recognize and value the relational effort that makes virtual care function. Ultimately, family medicine is built on relationships. It's relationships, in the clinic and in our communities that will get us through this pandemic.

Proposed legislation to amend Canada’s law on medical assistance in dying goes against the nature of medicine, which is to heal patients and alleviate suffering, says Dr. Ramona Coelho, a family physician in London, Ont. Dr. Coelho is among a group of physicians who wrote an open letter opposing Bill C-7. More than 800 Canadian doctors have now signed the letter.