Empathy: How I Found My Purpose Before Losing Hope

I hated medical school. I did not fit in, so much so that I considered dropping out. Maybe I am not meant to be a doctor, I often thought. But a part of me knew that was not true, because I had experience being on the other side as a caregiver. I understood something most of my peers did not: patients want doctors who care about them, not just for them.

The most competitive students in medical school are called gunners - and I did not qualify to play in their league. Unlike them, I was not excited by diseases and how to treat them. What interested me more were the emotions and feelings experienced by patients.

I realized just how different I was from my classmates during my Internal Medicine rotation. Our team was caring for a man with metastatic liver cancer. The day a code was called in the dialysis unit, we knew it was for him. As the commotion of the code swept through the unit I turned to one of my classmates and urged, “We need to call his sister and cousin! They visit every day, he would want them here.” She looked eagerly towards the code as she replied, “This is really exciting, I have never been part of a code! I would rather stay here and participate.”

Shit. Am I supposed to be excited about the code too?

I struggled with internal conflicts like these until my last year of residency. That is when I was introduced to human-centered design. The design firm IDEO defines human-centered design as “a creative approach to problem solving…that starts with the people you’re designing for and ends with new solutions that are tailor made to suit their needs.” It is utilized in various industries, including healthcare. At its core is the practice of empathy, cultivating a deep understanding of peoples’ thoughts, feelings and behaviors.

Finally, I had found my people within medicine: people who would step away to call a patient’s sister and cousin.