Vicki Allemand Scott, a mother on Facebook, concurs, “When my daughter passed away the doctors and nurses formed a wall in front of us until she was gone. Real doctors cry.ĥ) Patients want doctors who cry. Patients are comforted when doctors grieve with them. Please do not punish your colleagues for their willingness to be vulnerable with grief-stricken families. Grieving is a healthy reaction to sadness. Her boss told her, “Unless you are dying, crying is unprofessional behavior and not to be tolerated.” Some physicians and young doctors-in-training are uncomfortable with tears. I asked him to consider, “Who did she harm by crying?” Meanwhile, a physician tells me she’s been cited for unprofessional conduct for crying at work. He thought her behavior was unprofessional. That needs to change-now. A premedical student volunteering in the local ER tells me about a female physician who cried after losing a child. It has shaped who I am as a person.Ĥ) In medicine, crying is unprofessional. Life is very fragile and the pain of losing those we are trying to help becomes a scar that doesn’t go away. I was in the bathroom crying in private between patients several times yesterday. Yesterday one of my 17-month-old patients died. And I feel like the guy in this picture.ģ) Doctors are not allowed to grieve. A surgeon, TheGreatGator, shares, “We are never formally trained to deal with loss and/or with giving the worst news of a families life to them.” Another doctor, boldwhite, writes: But it’s that moment, when you stop resuscitation, and you look around, you look down at your shoes to make sure there’s no blood on them before talking with family, you put your coat back on and you take a deep breath, because you know that you have to tell a family that literally the worst thing imaginable has happened. We can only do so much, and we can only hope to do our best. Give me the heroin addict who needed IV access yesterday, but no one can get an IV. When it comes to our work, nothing is harder-and I mean nothing-than telling a loved one that their family member is dead. The voyeuristic photo reveals the emotional reality of doctoring-and a side of physicians that people don’t usually see-while uniting us all in our common humanity.Ģ) Unexpected death is universally heartbreaking. An ER doc, Smeee, writes:

In their own words, here is why the photo went viral:ġ) Humans crave raw empathy. The photographer captures a poignant moment in a stoic profession that trains doctors to remain professionally distant. Minutes after the photograph, the doctor returns to work “holding his head high.” Thousands of people have commented on the web. His coworker, a close friend of the doctor, posts the photo (with permission) online. A paramedic snaps a photo of the tender scene. Outside of a Southern California hospital, an ER doctor is crouched down against a concrete wall grieving the loss of his 19-year-old patient.

Doctors in training are dying