Sunday, August 19, 2012
sometimes i think i judge people too quickly and too harshly. and it's totally unbecoming of someone who is an aspiring healthcare professional, and is supposed to empathise with patients. oh dear.
I was allocated this patient who needs upper and lower partial dentures, and so i called her up to fix an appt some time ago. she sounded preoccupied throughout the whole convo, and i could hear the clinking of coins in the background (which was really noisy, and some sounds like mahjong tiles knocking against each other), and then people kept calling her in the background (i assumed it was her mahjong kakis) and she was replying in mandarin "it's the hospital people on the line! " and i was pretty irritated actually, cos it sounded like she was not interested in listening to me, and was more fixated on entertaining her mahjong kakis lol. so all i managed to do was to fix an appt (although initially i had planned on fixing an appt, plus taking her medical history over the phone, to save myself some chairside time in the clinic).
About 1 week before the scheduled appt, she apparently called up NUH and asked them to check out who the dental student in charge of her treatment was, because apparently i did not leave my name :O this was totally preposterous srsly, because i definitely told her my name, AND i told her that i was using my handphone to call her, so she could just save the number for future use. i was so mad when our clinic receptionist told me about it, and asked me to contact this patient and leave my name this time. well i was fuming la, because i definitely gave her all the details omg. who the hell is so stupid to schedule appts without leaving her name and number right, my goodness?! so i complained to the recep that she was too busy playing mahjong, and didn't bother listening to me properly.
then when i met her for the scheduled appt, as i was taking her medical history, i had to ask about her occupation too. and then she told me that she was a cashier at those 4D toto shops, and she worked everyday except on fridays. it was then that i realised that when i first called her (which was a saturday morning) she was probably at work, and the so-called "mahjong kakis" were actually probably her colleagues. while it was true that she was preoccupied (and really didn't catch my name and number), it was only because she was at work, trying to earn a living for herself, and not because she was playing mahjong. i felt so bad omg.
then, because it was a screening visit, the supervisor came over to check out her case (a case of a really loose upper denture), and then he told me that it was a difficult case. i won't elaborate much here, lest it gets too technical, but basically it's due to the skeletal structure of her facial bones, and the anatomy of her upper lips, that necessitates the very very unique way of setting up the teeth of the current denture, eventually causing it to loosen.
there's no other way to get a better fitting denture, without compromising the aesthetics, since a better fitting denture would require the teeth to be set up closer to the bony ridge, but this would cause her upper lip to be even more retruded compared to her lower lip, and she'd probably end up looking like an ape or sth. But setting up the teeth so far away from the bony ridge, in order to maintain an acceptable aesthetic facial profile, would mean that there'd be a clockwise moment of the denture teeth (the weight of all these teeth is quite heavy too, cos it's a really long span saddle) about the fulcrum, plus with the upper lip constant exerting a downward force on the front part of the denture, it's really no wonder that the denture keeps dropping downwards at the front.
My instructor then proceeded to explain to both me and the patient, that there's no way i could come up with a better denture, especially since this is a really difficult case, and i'm "just a student" and my denture might turn out worse than her current denture. well, i understand that he was trying to help me manage patient expectations of me, lest the patient gets some notion that i'm definitely going to be able to do a better job than the previous operator, and start having sky-high expectations of me, for this challenging case, i think it was the way he said it, that made me feel really discouraged.
i don't think my discouraged expression showed on my face, because i was wearing my mask. but i guess my patient probably put herself in my shoes, and figured that i would feel slightly disillusioned with myself after hearing those words, and she asked my instructor in mandarin "but why don't you have more confidence in your student? " to which he replied and said, not that he's trying to put me down in front of patients or what, but he just wanted to make sure that both parties (i.e. operator and patient) had realistic expectations of what could be done, and what could be improved on, so that neither party would be disappointed at the end of the whole thing when the final product is issued. My super encouraging patient just said "it will be fine, i'm sure, don't worry! my previous sets of dentures were made by students too!"
then after he left my cubicle, my patient was so cute omg, she was like "ok? on ah? " and she grabbed my hand and said in mandarin again, "bu yao dui zi ji mei you xin xin!" (don't lose confidence in yourself!) so sweet right omg. see, she's so good at empathising with me, and yet i totally misunderstood her and judged her even before meeting her, omg, shame on me, seriously! ):
so anyway yes, i will do my best to give her a proper set of dentures, functional and aesthetic at the same time. that is really the least i could do anyway... all i want is for her to be satisfied with the final product, so that her precious time and hard-earned money wouldn't be wasted. she deserves at least that much from me haha.
i guess i won't be using her for my test case though, since it is a challenging one (thank goodness my instructor told me about all the challenges too, or else i'd really have unrealistic expectations of myself and try to take this on as a test case omg, and end up failing the whole thing lol! )
and after this, i'll seriously make a conscious effort not to judge people so quickly. always give people the benefit of the doubt, because i guess it's true: you will never know a man, until you walk two moons in his moccasins. until then, before we actually put ourselves in people's shoes, we should not be passing judgment on them too quickly, firstly because it is totally unfair to them, and secondly, what right have we got to do so anyway?
i know it's all easier said than done, but i'm going to try my best to be a better person, starting from today (:
