My husband and I used to own a sailboat together with another couple. We spent many happy weekends sailing from our boat’s mooring in Marblehead, Massachusetts down to Gloucester for lunch or to Boston to shop and dine in the South End. On one occasion, our friends invited an internist friend of theirs along.

We hadn’t been sailing long when this physician fielded a call from a patient.

“Go to the ER,” the doctor said within the first five seconds of the call.

“Go to the ER,” he repeated several more times, rolling his eyes and sighing dramatically. No follow-up questions. No explanation for his advice. Just “Go to the ER.”

Now, in his defense, his advice may have been perfectly reasonable and justified. Perhaps his patient was having chest pain at the gym. Maybe her labor pains were seconds apart. But his sighing and eye-rolling belied an annoyance at the intrusion of a patient into his day on the sea…and suggested a deeper cynicism invading his work. I doubt that his patient felt very listened to or heard in whatever their complaint or symptom was.

There is a give and take to our interactions: I talk. You listen. You talk. I listen. You share with me your story. I pledge to hear it, and to handle it with the same care and intention with which you gave it to me. These are the........

© Psychology Today