Caritas

This is not a post about health insurance, haha.

I've recently, uhm, "leveled up" and now have the unenviable task of handling charity patients. In residency training, these are the supposed learning cases where the residents can apply their knowledge of medicine and practice their own brand of healing.

Guinea pigs? Nope, I don't think so. Not when there are 2 or 3 consultants hovering over your management and questioning you. And let's not even mention the audit, somebody might get ideas. Haha.

For our training, charity means handling those out-of-funds patients who most likely have difficult cases being they've already exhausted their money.

For me, it's trial by fire.

For my patients, it's a chance at a really big discount for his care.

I've had the fortune of having had 4 charities so far, and it's a different feeling each time seeing patients go home a little bit better than how they came in because of my orders in their charts.

The feeling of holding that chart with your name on it, seeing the patient and talking with their families each time you go on rounds, and expecting them on follow-ups -- it's very doctor-y. Haha. It's a mixture of the anxiety of messing up, the fear of failure, the elation of getting something right and the power of healing another human being.

It probably isn't the most reasonable thing to hope that all my patients end up walking home through the hospital doors, but I'd like to keep that streak up as long as I can possibly can.