Ridiculous Behavior = Social Sciences?

I’m going to preface this entry with the fact that I don’t know anything, I still have a lot to learn in life, and this is all just my personality.

I find it most fascinating (with a lot of empathy and an attempt at understanding) when I learn about patients who attempt to keep a brave face through it all while they’re trying to deal with a set of different cards life has given them. Here’s a list of 14 topics running through my thoughts at this current moment in time on Monday morning, Memorial Day 2010:

1) incurable cancers

2) different economic backgrounds – from the rich to the poor, lower middle class, upper middle class, even prisoners (yes, I have seen prisoners at the hospital and a couple have been just a few doors down from my room)

3) lack of access to healthcare, access to healthcare

4) when to push and grovel a.k.a. fight for the things you need and then when to silence that voice because it’s actually better to stay quiet

5) English as a Second Language

6) difficulty of categorizing young patients from 18-24 years of age – are they pediatrics, are they adults?

7) cultural differences, religious beliefs, spirituality

8 ) alternative medicine, integrative medicine, traditional Western medicine, how other hospitals practice internationally

9) the attraction of hospital business to outlier case studies

10) how to address the immunity of doctors from being jaded and how they “metabolize emotions” in the profession

11) there are days I want to just sit at the clinics and ask my physicians if I could just follow them around, observing the doctor-patient relationship from a third-party perspective

12) there are days when I want to conduct candid interviews with my health care team to understand how their roles impact their lives and how they must emotionally cope with the loss – how some do I better than others by distancing, how some quietly vent in a special room over patients regarding frustration, sadness, anger, annoyances, etc.

13) figuring out the hospital system and how it works – my findings are… kindness, respect for one another, honest answers, and friendly assertiveness.

14) here’s the kicker of them all: dealing with leukemia in a developing nation with lack of basic health care needs.

As you can probably tell, I am a bit crazy and nerdy, but when “trained” under the social sciences … it’s the first instinctive thing I do. I ask why and would love to do some “studies” on this. I have a feeling my physicians and nurses who are reading this now will laugh a little at my ridiculous behavior