Family Medicine – Day 19

It was a day of affirmations. I got a lot of comments from patients today that I was doing a good job. It felt good to be affirmed that at least from patient perspective I was doing ok. Not that this was the first time, but the ratio was just higher today. Part of it may have been that I didn’t feel as pressured today to get on to the text patient. Part of it may have been the fact that most of my patients were English speaking. It just so much easier to make a personal connection with someone who speaks the same language, despite my best efforts to be very personable through a translator with the Spanish-speaking patients. That’s why I need to really become better at my Spanish, thought today I also had a primarily Tagalog-speaking patient. There was a patient today who wanted to practice her English which was a good opportunity for me to practice my Spanish. We still had a translator to mediate some of the harder medical terms and longer sentences, but it was a good experience. I NEED MORE PRACTICE.