The woman was sitting on a gurney in the emergency room, and I was facing her, typing. I had just written about her abdominal pain when she posed a question I’d never been asked before: “May I take a look at what you’re writing?”
At the time, I was a fourth-year medical resident in Boston. In our ER, doctors routinely typed visit notes, placed orders and checked past records while we were in patients’ rooms. To maintain at least some eye contact, we faced our patients, with the computer between us.
But there was no reason why we couldn’t be on the same side of the computer screen. I sat down next to her and showed her what I was typing. She began pointing out changes. She’d said that her pain had started three weeks ago, not last week. Her chart mentioned alcohol abuse in the past; she admitted that she was under a lot of stress and had returned to heavy drinking a couple of months ago.
Listen to the full WGBH interview or read the transcript here.
