While roaming the hallways of the hospital recently, I came across one of my favorite patients. Mr. Patient is tall, somewhat stooped over, and a very pleasant man in his early 80s. On hospital visits, he is always accompanied by his wife of several decades and today was no exception. At the time I saw them, they were deeply engaged in the great intellectual exercise of locating a hospital department, an elderly couple standing befuddled in front of a gaggle of signs pointing every which way. And as always, they were deeply engrossed in a dialogue. There was a lot of head-shaking and a few words floated to my ears as I approached them “…no, no, that way is the Xray…”. As he turned around, incomprehension, followed a moment or two later by a big smile of recognition, made an appearance and his hand extended for a handshake.
As we shook hands however, I rapidly became deaf to their words. I could not hear much of anything they were saying, and only mechanically uttered some social niceties. It was the handshake! Or, the lack thereof.
The problem is, it wasn’t really a handshake. Dictionary.com defines a handshake as:
a gripping and shaking of right hands by two individuals, as to symbolize greeting, congratulation, agreement, or farewell.
My act of gripping had been interrupted by the premature grip-and-shake exercised by Mr. Patient, resulting in a finger-crush-and-shake experienced by me. My fingers were denied their birthright of gripping and the palm of my hand felt left out. I’ve heard of the “dead fish” handshake, but the lifeless fish here was being gripped, and shaken, by its tail! It was quite disconcerting!
It wasn’t the first time this has occurred either. In recent times, each and every episode of the dead fish has occurred with Mr. Patient, and him alone. Every time I run into Mr. Patient, the experience of handshaking threatens to dominate my thoughts requiring conscious, voluntary effort on my part to refocus. Now, I’m not a bad handshaker by any means. I’m not a ‘crusher’ and no one will ever mistake me for a salesman trying to sell the latest model of (insert brand name here). But my hand grip is firm and professional, thank you very much. (I found this gem of an article with a unique perspective on why some professionals don’t have a crushing handshake, an absolute must-read!)
I’ve heard that how a person shakes hands reflects on their personality, self-confidence etc. It is apparently one of the important non-verbal cues you send about yourself, and one that many people subconsciously use to assess the other person. A dead fish being shaken by its tail does not reflect my opinion about myself and that is certainly not how I want to be assessed!
According to a study, “the ideal physician is confident, empathetic, humane, personal, forthright, respectful, and thorough”. I delude myself into believing that most of my patients would identify these qualities in me. Mr. Patient’s rendering of the dead fish however, created doubts about the very first of those characteristics – confidence. Not exactly a comforting situation. You see, I am one of those doctors who at times ‘see’ patients when they are under large blue surgical drapes in a room with bright overhead lights, people in masks and sterile blue gowns, and a large steel tray nearby. A tray with assorted needles and scalpel blades, and an array of shiny steel instruments which could easily create morbid confusion in the patient were it not for the wonderful properties of modern anesthesia. It is not the kind of situation where confidence is a dispensable or even an optional commodity!
With professional reputation and even more importantly, patient comfort and confidence at stake, I felt the pressing need to find a remedy. I don’t want to come across like a wuss to my patients. Certainly not to Mr. Patient who, as stated, is one of my favorite patients. I’ve decided to one-up him at our next meeting with my own version of super-premature grip-and-shake which, I’m convinced, is the only way to tackle the premature-grip-and-shakers. I’ve been practicing on colleagues and hospital staff – without their knowledge, of course! The element of surprise is all too important. It’s going well, very well in fact. Most people seem to have developed a preference to greet me with a hurried wave-and-hi.
I think I’m ready for the follow-up appointment with Mr. Patient.
Notes:
- Mr. Patient is not his real name, of course!
- Foreign / international medical graduates, don’t miss a crucial interview tip – the importance of your handshake during a residency interview as subtly pointed out in this seemingly irrelevant article.
