More progress on book 2: No one is coming, you are ENOUGH

Here is a small except from the ongoing work in the second book. These are the kinds of things I aim to teach new providers.

Pick your favorite patients (yeah, it’s a thing) 

This title seems like the epitome of what you don’t want to do as a provider.  You certainly don’t want favorite patients, or do you?  My personal advice is that you do, but not literally.  Do I think you should have a list in your mind of your 10 favorite patients?  Well, yes actually, but I think there should really be about 50 people on your top 10 list?   

Why should a top 10 list instead be a top 50 and why call it a top 10 if it isn’t?  Simple, I think you should love your patients enough that at any one time, 50 of your patients would come to your mind as “top 10 eligible.” Anyone on this list should lift your heart when you think of them.  When you go through the trouble to think about your patients in this manner, you create semi-regular moments when your entire clinical day will change simply because the next room holds one of your top 10 most favorite patients.   And even though you will have 50 people in your top 10 list, you should STILL have one patient who is your number one.   

For me, that patient is usually the oldest, grumpiest, frailest, most sour disposition that I have.  There is just something about making someone like that smile that keeps me YOUNG!  You may not think like me so let me explain the value of figuring out who your favorite patient is.  The mental exercise of who really belongs on the list and then who belongs at the TOP of it is an excellent way to grow your personal fondness for them.  What was once just your panel, now is a family, and (here is where the rubber meets the road) not just a theoretical family, but one that actually brings you joy when you think of them.