{"id":4821,"date":"2014-06-27T00:06:54","date_gmt":"2014-06-27T07:06:54","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/?p=4821"},"modified":"2014-06-25T12:52:25","modified_gmt":"2014-06-25T19:52:25","slug":"listening-to-her-patients","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/2014\/06\/27\/listening-to-her-patients\/","title":{"rendered":"Listening to her patients"},"content":{"rendered":"

Toronto physician Sharon Baltman treats her patients by listening. Author of the self-published memoir Escape from the Bedside<\/em>, Baltman, 66, takes readers on the journey of her decision to go to medical school until she ultimately gave up being a general practitioner so she could have more time for her patients.<\/p>\n

\"photo<\/a>
Dr. Sharon Baltman (photo from cjnews.com<\/a>)<\/em><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Currently maintaining a two-day-a-week psychotherapy practice, Baltman, who is divorced with one daughter, said that she escaped \u201cfrom the ivory tower of the hospital into private psychotherapy practice in order to listen closely to my patients, and hear their stories.\u201d<\/p>\n

She said that when she first announced her plans to enter pre-med at University of Toronto, she was told she\u2019d never be a doctor, \u201cbecause of her long painted fingernails, her big breasts, and the \u2018three Ms: marriage, motherhood and medicine.\u2019\u201d She persevered, however, and went into emergency medicine, then family practice.<\/p>\n

\u201cI left emergency medicine because I didn\u2019t have enough time for my patients,\u201d she said. \u201cI barely met [them] and rarely saw them a second time.\u201d<\/p>\n

She switched to a general practice, she said, \u201cso I would have longer-term connections, but ran out of time trying to deal with both the physical and emotional needs [of the patients].<\/p>\n

\u201cIn order to hear more about people\u2019s lives, and what made them tick, I finally chose full-time psychotherapy work, so I could have time to listen to their tales in a quiet, un-rushed venue. I chose not to be a psychiatrist, because I did not want to go through another residency.\u201d<\/p>\n

While she started with classic Freudian analytic work, she said, she later moved to cognitive behavioral therapy, \u201cto teach patients to deal with the here and now in a concrete way \u2013 to reframe their thoughts more positively, and to find the grey zone between the black and white extremes of life.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"image<\/a>It\u2019s only in the last 10 years, Baltman said, that medical schools have trained doctors in narrative medicine, a method whereby physicians do not merely treat medical problems, but take into account the specific psychological and personal history of the patient.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt is a way of listening closely to patients\u2019 stories about their illness. Instead of asking, \u2018Where is your pain?\u2019 narrative medicine has physicians asking patients to tell them what they need to know about them. By telling us a story, we get a lot more information about [our patients] and their illness.\u201d<\/p>\n

For example, she said, if someone comes in complaining of chest pains, \u201ca doctor typically asks where, for how long, and if they\u2019ve had it before. With narrative medicine, the doctor keeps interrogating until they get the whole story. Maybe it\u2019s stress-related, maybe it happens after a certain activity. They try to dig into the story.\u201d<\/p>\n

Patient care is much better, said Baltman, if physicians know everything that is going on. \u201cOn the [other hand], patients feel heard. An important piece of narrative medicine is that everyone is humanized.\u201d<\/p>\n

She said that there are doctors who have been practising narrative medicine for years, \u201cbut now it is an important part of medical school curriculum. When students learn about eye disease, they may also read a story about someone losing their vision, so students get an idea of what the patient is going through. They learn about a patient\u2019s experience by reading about them.\u201d<\/p>\n

Baltman said that, in retrospect, her career was headed in the direction of her current practice from the beginning. \u201cMy career took me here because I wanted to listen. Now, I have the opportunity to talk to my patients.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u2013 For more national Jewish news, visit cjnews.com<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Toronto physician Sharon Baltman treats her patients by listening. Author of the self-published memoir Escape from the Bedside, Baltman, 66, takes readers on the journey of her decision to go to medical school until she ultimately gave up being a general practitioner so she could have more time for her patients. Currently maintaining a two-day-a-week […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[1394,1396,1395],"class_list":["post-4821","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-national","tag-escape-from-the-bedside","tag-psychotherapy","tag-sharon-baltman"],"blocksy_meta":{"styles_descriptor":{"styles":{"desktop":"","tablet":"","mobile":""},"google_fonts":[],"version":8}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4821","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4821"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4821\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4821"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4821"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4821"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}