My first conscious recollection of facing a life challenge that would be more than momentary, happened when I was 6 years old. As the oldest child in a family of five, I was the first one to go to school. Older neighbourhood kids had given me glimpses of what school was like, but I needed to experience it myself.
Thankfully, my parents were supportive and gave me answers to my 3 biggest questions:
What can I know about school?
What must I do at school?
What may I hope about school?
Throughout my life, as I’ve faced various challenges and walked into new situations, I’ve found myself asking and pondering situation-specific versions of these 3 same questions.
It is a useful exercise. It occurs to me that as healthcare professionals, we can use these questions to inform the conversations we have with our patients and their families. When faced with life limiting diagnoses, patients and families want to know:
What can I know?
What must I do?
What may I hope?
Not surprisingly, these same questions are good ones for me to ask myself when, as a healthcare professional, I seek to support others in their healthcare journeys.
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