abstract:

The idea of being “haunted” appears often in accounts of the experience of health-care professionals and trainees who suffer from unresolved sorrow or regret about past clinical events, in particular the deaths of patients. The trope of haunting draws a direct line between past professional trauma and the dread of future failure, a connection embodied as a spectral patient who revisits the physician with doubt, anxiety, and exhaustion. This article suggests that the sense of being haunted may be a useful index for the unresolved effects of two omnipresent and underappreciated components of clinical practice: emotion and uncertainty. By connecting the aspects of feeling and (not) knowing that lead to physician suffering—in trauma that is inextricably both emotional and epistemological—a sustaining sense of meaning might be generated. Doctors’ work is, in several senses, weird, and medicine might benefit from paying closer attention to the etiologies and manifestations of its ghosts.

摘要：

被“困扰”的想法经常是由于对过去的临床事件，特别是患者死亡感到忧心or或遗憾的医疗专业人员和受训者的经历而出现的。困扰的根源在过去的专业创伤和对未来失败的恐惧之间划出了一条直接的界限，这种联系体现为光谱患者，他带着怀疑，焦虑和疲惫的心态重新审视了医生。本文表明，困扰感可能是临床实践中两个无所不在和未得到充分认识的成分（情绪和不确定性）未解决的影响的有用指标。通过将感觉和（不）知道导致医师痛苦的各个方面联系起来（在情感和认识论都不可避免的创伤中），可以产生一种持续的意义。