Compassion Fatigue

Every photo has a background. It holds the details hiding behind the main attraction: people walking by, engaged in their own conversations; piles of mail that have not been tidied; dishes in a sink; other people’s beach towels; storefronts and parking meters. These are the parts of a photograph you did not intend to capture, the accidental participants in your memory. This is the place where I exist.

Longevity in medicine necessitates some degree of desensitization. This is part of how we grow. It’s essential. This evolution, however, can come with a cost. With our competence comes the insidious erosion of empathy that creeps in, hand-in-hand with our competence, quietly, relentlessly, and destructively.

As the pandemic wore on, it became increasingly clear that our normal, pre-pandemic lives were bound for the past tense. As a resident in family medicine, I wondered what this might mean for our patient relationships. Would we develop the same rapport, or be able to guide our patients through maintaining health and treating illness as closely and meaningfully as before?

Kids #1 and #2 have finally made it out the door to school, which starts comically late because during a pandemic buses need more time to deliver kids safely to their final destinations. In fact, Kid #3—the only kid in my household who qualifies for busing—was at the bus stop at 8:15 to catch her bus to get to the same school, with the same start time, as her older brothers who walk the one kilometre.

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Does the gatekeeper role of primary care still serve any purpose?