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Asked by 353genk39 to Phil, Ali, Rob, Kit, Deborah, Charnelle, Adrian on 4 Nov 2017. This question was also asked by ruby.
Question: have you ever saved a life
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Ali Blatcher answered on 4 Nov 2017:
“Saving lives” is the thing that you are told most doctors do on a daily basis.
In fact, in my day job in elderly care, usually you are more facilitating someone to die in a dignified manner once they reach the end of their life.
The patient, however, that stands out for me was a 16 year old girl who was rushed into a&e with an asthma attack and we did manage to bring her back. It was a traumatic experience for all of us.
Most people that have cardiac arrests in the hospital unfortunately do not survive though, so it is rarely a heroic act.
Hope that helps!
Ali
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Philip Williams answered on 4 Nov 2017:
It’s strange. I never really think of my job like that. I always get shocked when a patient or their relative says to me “thank you so much for saving my life!”. It might be simply that I found a cancer which was treated successfully, or a patient collapsed ill in the surgery. When students come into the surgery to see what we do, they’re always surprised by how varied general practice is, and how many different illnesses we deal with every single day.
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Robert Cullum answered on 8 Nov 2017:
I always find this a difficult question to answer as I’m sure that actually lots of the treatments we give and things we do will have saved lives, but we never really know because we gave the treatment! It’s hard to know sometimes what would have happened to people if we hadn’t given them treatment so in that sense for me we probably save lives most days!
On the other hand, I’ve never seen someone where I could pin-point exactly where I have saved a life, and as Ali said, we spend as much time, if not more, ensuring that people have comfortable and dignified deaths.
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Adrian Taylor answered on 8 Nov 2017:
Several times, from stepping in when a patient was choking on their on sputum and the person doing the suction hadn’t got a clue, to talking someone out of taking their own life, but also failed to save one person who was determined to end theirs. Its how you cope with failure that matters, learning from it and not letting it weigh you down.
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Deborah Draycott answered on 8 Nov 2017:
I think we all save lives at some point in our career, whether that is by resuscitating someone whose heart has stopped, or by providing treatment or support to someone whose illness is life threatening. Sometimes we are not successful and sometimes it is not appropriate to try, and these situations are just as challenging.
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Deborah commented on :
If you mean resuscitating someone whose heart has stopped then yes it was something I got involved in a lot when I was a Nurse in hospital. In Practice Nursing we don’t see too much of that – although I have had one or two.
Generally we ‘make a difference’ to peoples lives and some patients feel this is just as significant. Hopefully we manage to treat peoples illnesses and diseases before they become life threatening, but it’s not always possible and helping someone deal with a terminal illness is just as important as the ones we save.