Eureka: The Moment When It All Clicks

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Welcome back to Anamnesis by MedPage.

You are here joining me, Amy Ho, your host and ER doctor, on season two of our podcast, Anamnesis!

For our regulars, howdy — you’re in for a great one today. For our newbies — also howdy, but by way of introduction, Anamnesis is a podcast about medicine — specifically, all the parts of medicine that aren’t the actual medicine. This isn’t another podcast chatting about pathophysiology or a journal club on the latest papers. No, this is a podcast about what really keeps us ticking: the emotional roller-coaster, the heart-wrenching stories, the intangible forces that both can tear us apart and bring us back when it comes to taking care of patients.

We are a podcast about the power of narrative medicine and storytelling in healthcare. Every episode, we feature three colleagues in healthcare to share stories that spoke to them, that touched them, that drove them forward. And every episode, we feature these stories woven together in a theme.

In this episode, we have the theme “Eureka.” Now the word eureka comes from a Greek word with the meaning “I have found (it).”

Story has it that the ancient mathematician, Archimedes was the first to say it, and now we use the word as an exclamation denoting discovery, classically in the sciences.

Now, I’ll admit it, I’m an ER doctor. Gunshots, heart attack, strokes, stabbings — these things get me going. Research? Not so much.

My impression of research goes back to college when I remember I took the mandatory “Research Science” course and spent most of it pipetting small aliquots of liquid from one tube into another tube for an entire summer. The professor who taught the course called us his “pipetting monkeys” — and he didn’t exactly mean it as a fond nickname. But it was definitely descriptive of our activity. Now, research has tons of applications for moving us forward, I totally recognize, but it just isn’t quite for me.

But eureka isn’t just used in the sense of “pipetting monkeys,” but for anything that gives us that moment when things just … click.

In medicine, because so much of clinical care is patient interaction, this “eureka moment” usually comes for us through special patients. As much as we teach patients — about things like how to manage their diabetes, how to care for their wound, how to keep track of their medicines — they teach us so much more back.

Usually, their lessons are more hard-hitting for us than ours are for them. They reveal to us our own unconscious biases. They color our perspectives on how we see other facets of life. They show us there isn’t always a clear right and wrong. Patients are the best teachers, and they give us plenty of eureka moments. We have lined up today for you, three storytellers with very different backgrounds, but all sharing their “eureka” moments from their own special personal patients — and how that moment changed them for good.

Chapter 1. The Death of One Little Girl Helped Millions (4:28): A case more than 35 years ago has spurred discoveries ever since. Story by Kevin Tracey, MD.

Chapter 2. Screaming Patient, No Restraints (16:00): A story about empathy in emergency psychiatry. Story by Scott Zeller, MD.

Chapter 3. Diagnosing the Mind of a Special Patient (26:40): This patient proved that rare isn’t always rare. Story by Deborah Serani, PsyD.

Episode produced by Crystal Phend

Hosted by Amy Ho, MD

Sound engineering by Greg Laub

Theme music by Palomar

Want to share your story? Read the Anamnesis Storyteller Tip Sheet and when you’re ready, apply here!

Last Updated May 07, 2021