What my patients are teaching me about perspective and progress

My patient had just woken up after his open-heart surgery. Everything had gone well.

However, his first words to me were to describe how terrible he felt. His family, sitting at his bedside, asked whether he were going to be OK.

I couldn’t see what they were so worried about. After all, our team was very pleased with his progress.

Then I realized that our perspectives were fundamentally different.

To my patient and his family, everything was new: the pain, discomfort, the incessant alarms in the intensive-care unit.

But I was comparing his pain, breathing, and other vital signs to those of other patients in the ICU. I have seen terrible complications, downward trajectories, and great success stories. Given my baseline, this patient was progressing at a phenomenal rate.

One patient, two perspectives, two opposite conclusions.

This wasn’t the first time I had experienced a perspective gap with a family. So I knew enough to address their very real concerns as I explained the situation.

“All of these symptoms and feelings of discomfort are expected after surgery. But for having had open-heart surgery, he is doing wonderfully.”

With a nearly audible sigh of relief, the tension dissipated.

Our sense of well-being derives as much from perspective as from circumstances. We tend to compare our experiences to what we have known. However, by relying on a narrow comparison, we can lose sight of reality.

As a resident with a long road ahead in my medical training, I feel confused, tired, stressed, and uncomfortable some days with constantly encountering unfamiliar situations. Most days, I feel as if it is hard to tell whether I’m moving in the right direction.

My patients who worry that they are not doing well after surgery even when they are doing just fine — or even far better than fine — remind me to reconsider my perspective on my own situation.

Just as I like to tell my patients in the ICU, “Even though you are not feeling 100%, it doesn’t mean that you aren’t doing great.”

Reflecting on my life with this broader perspective, I am reminded of the fact that I get to do each day exactly what I have always dreamed of doing. The stress and fatigue are minor compared with the fulfillment I derive from work and the privilege of serving my patients.

These reminders take my mind off of the pains that come with being a resident, and allow me to find meaning in and gratitude for my overall trajectory.

Comparing present circumstances with past experience is natural. But it can make today’s challenges look overly intimidating or even insurmountable.

Opening up to other possibilities reminds us that we are doing just fine. With a nearly audible sigh of relief, the tension dissipates.

Jason Han, M.D., is a resident in cardiothoracic surgery in the Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania. The opinions expressed in this article do not represent those of the University of Pennsylvania Health System or the Perelman School of Medicine.