Deirdre Neilen, PhD: Shiwei Zhou is an infectious diseases physician from Michigan. Her poem, "Sort by Date of Death," reveals that a caring physician can't stop questioning if there was something else she could have done for her patient.
"Sort by Date of Death"
There is a place in the medical record, a tab
labeled Date of death. Click and you'll find
autopsy results; final discharge summary
or last documented phone call.
Why do this? Simple curiosity; professional
reflection and practice. Doesn't everyone?
Certainly nothing to do with the ceaseless interlocutor
asking of each name with an end date if
they died because of something you missed
that should not have been missed
or because of something you did
that should not have been done
or maybe because there was one more question
you should have asked -- the right question --
a question someone else would have asked
someone not you. Someone better.
Sometimes it is clear: a massive stroke. Or aspiration event,
PEA arrest, 45 minutes of CPR, anoxic brain injury.
Sometimes it is not: the autopsy is declined,
the last call is about a refill or a new mole.
It doesn't matter which names
on this list find you blameless,
because there will always be the other names, to which these
are added (clear water cannot clear an ink-stained glass):
the wife to whom you said, go home tonight, he'll be fine,
the young woman dead before her second anniversary.
Those are numbered in a different list, maintained
on a different server, the one in your head.
Stories are judged on how they end. Perhaps physicians are
judged on how their patients end.
Yes, there is a place you can go in the medical record
seeking revelation -- or is it absolution?
Though by now it can only be hoped
that you have come to realize
you will find neither.
