Hand holding: a patient's perspective

Abstract

The last thing I remember before surgery is the gentle reassurance of my doctor, standing by my side, pausing long enough to hold my hand. In that moment, I squeezed back and thanked her for being there. I wasn't thanking her for doing her job, but for really being there for me. I was tearful and emotional, probably due to the anesthesia combined with my own anxiety about the situation at hand. For several days after surgery, just recalling that moment would bring tears to my eyes not only because it was still so fresh, but also because my hormones were still way out of whack from my failed pregnancy. Now I look back at that moment before surgery without tears. I recall the physician's tenderness and wonder at the power of one person taking just a moment from her routine to be human and to help another person through a truly scary event. This hand-holding scene is mine alone to replay anytime, in the privacy of my mind as one of those 'breakthrough moments' in my life. The reality of that touch during a critical time overpowers all that I'll remember about my miscarriage, the pain, the surgery, and the recovery. Of course, Dr. Garrison is a doctor. She is supposed to help and heal. But her job description doesn't say 'hold hand of scared patient before surgery'. None of our job descriptions say 'take time to show that you care'. Maybe very few jobs offer many real opportunities for such an action as hand-holding (indeed, there is even a sensitivity that an innocent touch can be misunderstood). But whatever our job, occupation or station in life, we can all extend a hand to others in one way or another. In my surgery, the significance of the action was that my doctor remembered who I was, a human being, not just the twenty-seventh surgery that month, not just another patient, but a human needing human contact. What we all need to remember in our jobs is that there are humans out there! In the rush of our daily activity, in our professions and in our families, we most often forget that the other people we are dealing with are human. Whether it's a customer, co-worker, patient, vendor, boss, assistant, student all of these folks are human and may have a silent longing for a moment of human hand-holding to get them through whatever hard knocks life may be delivering right now. If we could take this simple human gesture of hand-holding or some other form of human contact and weave it into the approach we