A few days ago, when I was walking home for class, a man asked me for directions in Russian. I know that he was asking for directions, not because my Russian was sufficient to decipher his intention but because he was pointing to a tattered map. From what I could tell, he was looking to get to the post office, which was pretty much a straight.
I tried to communicate that it was straight ahead in every way I could. I attempted in Hebrew. I attempted in English. I made a line with my finger on his map. I mimed a person walking forward and finding a post office.
Nothing worked and with each attempt he looked progressively more frustrated. I also felt frustrated because I knew what he was going through and I was powerless to help. I too was a stranger in a strange place. I knew exactly what it was like to say the simplest thing over and over again and not see a look of understanding on the face of the person that I was talking to.
To me, this is one of the greatest assets of going to medical school in a foreign country. The very fact that we know what it is like to struggle with being able to communicate and understand basic things is what is going to make us good doctors. Not understanding is hard.
So here’s to my classmates who have known the true horror of taking a bite of a would-be-delicious breakfast parfait, only to find they had purchased sour cream and not yogurt at the grocery store.
My very resilient classmates who have double, triple and quadruple checked the bus map, only to find they were now farther from their destination then they started.
Together, we have learned intimately what it means to need help and lack the words to ask for it.
My peers and I represent a class of physicians who will understand that it is not the responsibility of a patient to communicate in ways a physician can understand. It is on the doctor to hear a patient’s explanation and figure it out.
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