As an anaesthetist, I occasionally see former patients as I go about my daily life outside the hospital. A nod or a smile is usually all that passes as acknowledgement between us. But a meeting a few years back sticks in my mind. I was standing in a supermarket queue on Christmas Eve when a woman and a teenage boy approached me.
“You won’t remember me” the woman said. “But 16 years ago, you came into the hospital when you weren’t on call and resuscitated my baby son who had meningococcal septicaemia.”
I racked my memory and then recalled a Saturday afternoon when I was rung at home by a very concerned colleague to say a six-month-old baby had been admitted with a florid rash, very severe sepsis and was critically ill. At that time our paediatric intensive care services were not as well developed as they are now and, as a specialist paediatric anaesthetist, it wasn’t uncommon to rush into hospital when not on call to lend a hand with a difficult case.
With my colleagues I put the baby on a ventilator and inserted intravenous lines to treat and monitor the infant’s very low blood pressure. I still remember the look of terror on his parents’ faces as they thought they were going to lose their son, an instance made all the more emotive as I had twin sons of a similar age. But after a stormy few days he steadily improved and was well enough to leave intensive care before going home a few weeks later in good health.
“I just wanted to say if you hadn’t been there for our son, he wouldn’t be here today, so thank you and have a very happy Christmas!” We both welled up while the young man shuffled self-consciously and muttered his thanks.
All of my colleagues will have at least one similar story to tell. It is deeply gratifying to receive such heartfelt feedback from our patients and their families. In such challenging times for the NHS it makes us reflect why we came into medicine in the first place – to make a real difference in real people’s lives and not just be an anonymous cog in a tick-box, target-driven system.
Anaesthetists are by reputation a modest, self-effacing bunch but a chance meeting such as mine reminds us – and those with whom we work and treat – that we are highly trained doctors with life-saving skills that make a profound difference to our patients every single day.
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