Look, said the doctor, I’m afraid I have some bad news. Your cancer is terminal.
Oh but doctor, said the patient, how long have I got?
You haven’t got too long, said the doctor. Maybe a month, six weeks. During that time we’ll make you as comfortable as possible. There will be days of discomfort, but nothing that can’t in the main be relieved.
But doctor, I don’t want to die yet. Can’t they operate or something?
There’s very little can be done. It’s too advanced, said the doctor. Would you like me to tell your wife, or is that something you’d prefer to do yourself?
I don’t know. I’m just bewildered. Shocked and bewildered. I don’t feel that sick. Maybe there’s a mistake?
I’m sorry, said the doctor.
OK, said the tutor at the Med. School. Times up! Swap roles now. The one who played the patient now plays the doctor. This time, you are to role-play breaking the sad news of terminal cancer to the spouse.
Weave a Web 
Nothing will prepare those young medicos for the times they are faced with the reality of telling someone they are not immortal.
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That’s true. My cousin Leila, was the tutor nurse at Hastings Hospital here in NZ – she used to get furious when a doctor would simply say, “Nurse, tell the patient the story” and walk off…
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Ducking the responsibility, eh?
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Yes! The other thing that annoyed her was failing nurses in their final year. She reckoned on sorting them out in the first year instead of wasting years training them only to fail them! In then end, she resigned and worked as an industrial nurse for a gigantic company.
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I see the double swap cancels out the possibility of the original perpetrator of the news dying suddenly, thus leaving a hole in the training. I can’t restrain myself from observing it’s the dyer alone who knows where the death pinches, or the spouse who keeps hurting in the aftermath. Medics move on to the next case. That’s a scary story, notwithstanding the drama.
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Having to tell patients bad news would be one reason I never became a doctor. The second reason is the finger and the prostate check – it’s something I could never do! The third reason is: I was too dumb to be a doctor…
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Brilliant
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Thank you, Derrick.
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I love the twist at the end! When I did my teacher training, we had to role play speaking with “difficult” parents. Nothing so intense as telling a patient their number’s up, but emotional all the same.
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There were some difficult parents I would’ve enjoyed telling that their number was up!
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Actually, the med students at the university where I taught do a lot of this role-playing. Heaven help the person who gets an MD with no empathy or interpersonal skills!
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When I did a hospital course (sort of a counselling thing) the brain surgeon took me with him so I could see how he went about telling the little boy’s parents that the operation was not successful… He was excellent.
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