Thoughts From Clinic Newbie
Posted August 27th, 2007 by bmiller
So I just started treating patients in clinic at my school last week and I gotta say, I do think I picked the right profession. If I didn’t know it already, I really know it now. I loved all of it, meeting my new patients, figuring out what they need, deciding which points to use, and alas, testing my herbal knowledge.
My supervisors are lovely, they really let me do my own thing and make gentle suggestions about what they might do differently. So I gotta say all in all, things are going really well. I’m not dealing with anything crazy, just your garden variety aches and pains, but I feel confident that I can do this.
The thing that surprised me almost immediately though was how my ego and emotions seemed to get wrapped up in the progress that I wanted to see my patients make. I basically see one patient every hour and a half, and I really want to see them get better. I already care very much about them. Luckily, I have seen some progress, but I have to ask myself, how would I feel if I did not see progress or they did not come back? I’m thinking it would be a very tough experience. I’ve already decided that this is not a place that I want to get stuck because I think it would be wasted energy and destructive.
I think that I am seeing really early on some of the perils of a strictly one-on-one or conventional, or whatever you want to call it, practice. The first problem is that I am so focused on how the few patients that I have are doing because I have so few patients period. I am overly invested in their progress when I should take a step back and know that I am doing my best and set some boundaries.
From the point of view of a student, it is simply stressful, but if my economic livelihood depended on it, I’d be freaking out. I think that it is easy to fall into this trap when you just don’t have a lot of patients to think about. I start to wonder if I am bringing those expectations and emotional investment into the treatment room and if it somehow affects the patients. I have to guess that it does, or it would someday.
Anyway, what I am getting at is that I love what I am doing, its tons o fun. But, I am not liking the way that I am doing it. I wish that I had many more patients to treat. I would be becoming a better acupuncturist much quicker, more patients would be served, and the heavy emotional investment would not loom over a treatment and it could just be what it is, a simple acupuncture treatment.
Re: Thoughts From Clinic Newbie
Having spent 13 years treating people as a massage therapist, and a couple as an acupuncturist, let me share some thoughts.... Are you really going to care less about the individuals you treat, just because there are more of them? ...Of course not.... People are out of balance, ie -sick-, for lots of different reasons. At some point you will run into the person who gets their energy from being a sick person, who is invested in being unwell. That sounds ridiculous until you meet them, but hopefully you will have learned by then to let go of results. You [we] are there to facilitate what change the person is ready for - the 'success' of any treatment is a combination of the practicioners skill at seeing the patient, and then figuring out where to start and what modalities to use AND the ability of the person to let go of their present reality and move into a new one. And there is the consideration of sometimes there is an uber-condition that just needs different atttention > you can treat someone for knee pain, but if they have no cartilage, they just need the knee surgery.... All you can do is worry about yourself> be as concious and well-intended as possible, know as much as you can and keep growing, be willing to admit that maybe your first ideas weren't right if they don't shift, be willing to admit that maybe something/someone else would work better.... If you can do all that - you will have lots of happy people seeking you out and telling their friends about the great acupuncturist they have found.... Dana, [the comment above] said exactly this, but I thought I'd throw the long-play version out there.
Re: Thoughts From Clinic Newbie
Its great that you are aware that your ego gets tangled up sometimes. Just keep reminding yourself that you are facilitating the patient to heal themselves. You are channelling the energy, not creating it. It is tough though.... good luck!
Re: Thoughts From Clinic Newbie
my shiatsu teacher used to say that you can give a very louse shiatsu and the client will still feel better because they were forced to lay down and rest for an hour (!). i am not saying this to advocate poor treatment (whatever that means), but to say that yes, taking yourself out of the central position does help a lot, it frees up all that space for the qi to shift and move.
-tatyana
Re: Thoughts From Clinic Newbie
It's really difficult, in my opinion, to know with certainty. Sometimes people will say "Oh, you are so wonderful, you've helped me so much", and this will make our ego feel good. But was it "I" who really helped them? Or maybe just gave them a little nudge with a not incompetent treatment.
Other times people will drift away, leaving me wondering....did they get what they wanted? How are they doing? In these situations, the ego may feel a lot of doubt, perhaps even anxiety.
If you charge $200 a treatment, then, perhaps the ego feels great regardless what is going on with the patient. I don't know, I've never charged this much....well maybe a couple of times on a PIP claim way back when.
Acupuncture school is a good place to start watching this slippery character - the ego, Mr. or Mrs. Expectation.
Community Acupuncture, more easily puts the ego in its rightful place - a witness to some wonderful healing (and learning) that it has the good fortune to participate in. Not center stage.
Keep exploring, observing....