One of the big privileges of being a doctor is that people trust you and tell you things which are very personal to them. They trust you with information which is not shared with others. It is very humbling and also scary at times.
Some of the most awkward times is when patients tell me things about their family members or close friends. Issues with money, altering a will, trust, so on and so forth.
The primary idea being to stand up for your patient and advocate for them. I have found that the best person who know the patient is their GP. It gets harder when the patient does not have a long term GP or keeps changing their GP.
Social workers are a great resource, but harder to find in the real world setting. The majority of social workers have “been-there-done-that” and seen it all, so speak from a standpoint of pure experience. That is hard to get.
I had an older patient who has been on treatment for a while. The patient comes independently and we have great chats. The patient was accompanied by their child on one of the visits. The child insisted that my patient was getting dementia and was forgetting things. The patient later broke down and told me that money was disappearing from their bank account. The patient is convinced that the child is responsible for it. Such a difficult situation for the family.
It is really hard to truly heal the situation. Even if the money issues are sorted, the trust is destroyed.
Everyday is a blessing. Thank God for it.
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