Issue 1 Final Draft 1

hospital for weeks because of
a surgical complication that
could have been avoided, and
might have been avoided had
someone listened, I said I
was really sorry. When she
told me she just wanted
to go home to her fouryear-old
girl, who hadn’t
seen her in days and
didn’t understand what
was going on, I said it
again and felt cold.
A part of me
wanted to ask more
questions about that
painful experience,
and to acknowledge
the smallness of
being only half-listened to — a
feeling I knew well. But the part of me
in a white coat worried it might be deemed
unprofessional for
me to do so. I was even a little relieved I didn’t have
to share anything at all.
I realized then that, in my everyday
interactions, I instinctively respond to others’
openness about complex experiences by making
the effort to open up as well. Vulnerability, for
me, is a way of acknowledging another person’s
hurt, showing them they’re not alone in it, and
letting them know I trust them with my pain as
well. Vulnerability begets vulnerability, and this
exchange, when executed right, holds the promise
of comfort, relief, and community.
In clinical settings, patients have no choice
but to be vulnerable, while physicians don’t have
to be, and may in fact be discouraged from being
so. I understand why this is: patients come to the
hospital to seek help, not to hear about physicians’
problems or make friends.
Yet, as I talked to my patient in her
partitioned hospital room — her in a flimsy gown,
and I in a sturdy white coat — I felt my inability to be
vulnerable with her heighten our power imbalance.
Illustration by Lillian Zhu
This tension led me to
wonder: How can I convey hope
and professionalism while
also removing the distance
that comes from a one-way
transmission of vulnerability?
Perhaps one answer
lies in letting patients wear
their own versions of the
white coat.
The white
coat has hidden my sweat
stains the first time I
asked a patient whether
they were sexually
active and the wrinkles
on the shirt I woke
up too late to iron. The
white coat hides my flaws
as a breathing being, and enables
me to show only the parts of myself that
I am most proud of. Patients, by the nature of
the transaction, have to show the stains and tears
their biology has accumulated and the buttons their
organs have lost, but this does not mean we can’t let
them also wear the things they are most proud of.
Perhaps, there’s a way to carve out space for patients
to express the positive things in their lives, to talk
about their mischievous niece or the job they love
and hope to get back to.
These days, I daydream about the white coat
a lot less but I think about what I might say when
I’m wearing it a lot more. On my walks to class, I
brainstorm questions that might give patients an
opportunity to present themselves in a way that
highlights their joy and pride. Most times, when I
try them out in person, they come out awkwardly
or not at all, and I embarrass myself. But there’s
something rewarding, and almost fair, about having
to own my naked attempts, covered only by a very
thin paper gown of experience, with the people
who are made to wear them for days on end. There’s
something gratifying about thanking patients
for taking the time to teach me at the end of an
interaction, and watching them crack a smile.
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