It can be anything. Your favorite vacation, a hobby…

“I’ve been to 157 US cities.”

“I love my grandchildren. I like to facetime them.”

“I have a mermaid tail. It’s pink and purple.”

“I have a wife and kids waiting for me at home.”

“I liked to play basketball as a child.”

“I care about people.”

“I used to ride in the rodeo.”

“My favorite place to vacation is the Caribbean.”

“My son recently got married. I don’t like my new daughter-in-law.”

I look at hundreds of labs values a day. I review vital signs, recorded bowel movements, and urine output in milliliters for all my patients daily. I place orders and write notes. I answer a nursing question about every 6 minutes during the busiest part of my day. I discuss every patient with my supervising attending. I discuss complicated parts of my patients’ treatment with my senior resident. I coordinate with nutrition, social work, physical therapy, occupational therapy, speech, and numerous others to ensure patients are taken care of while they’re in the hospital and safely discharged. I examine every patient every day and if their status changes (like their blood pressure drops) I re-examine them. I do more, but this paragraph is already too long.

The constellation of the medical workup I order, medications I prescribe, and information I gather about my patients’ symptoms are how I figure out what is ailing them and how to treat it. As you can imagine, when so much of my energy is focused on sorting through data, it’s easy to forget that under all the data I collect are people.

The best doctors I’ve worked with each have their own way of reminding themselves that they are caring for people not just treating vessels of illness represented by labs, imaging, and physical exam findings. And, within the past few months, I decided to develop my own method as I plan to be among the best doctors. It’s tricky because as a doctor there isn’t time to learn many of the details of our patients’ lives. There is time to learn something small, however, if I prioritize it.

My way to learn something about my patients as people is to ask about something nonmedical. My phrasing is, “Tell me one fun fact about you. It can be anything, such as a hobby or a favorite place you vacationed.” I’ve learned about the most amazing people this way.

The above simple inquiry has made all the difference in my practice as a doctor and my ability to endure the hustle that is inherent to residency. It’s easier to arrive at the hospital 6 days a week by 6 am (and leave often more than 12 hours later) when I’m showing up to help someone with family and a mermaid tail to go home to compared to showing up for a pile of numbers representing blood counts, vital signs, and urine volume.

It’s the people who are the patients who make medicine different from any other profession where people aren’t the subject. And it’s the people who have shared their fun facts with me who continually remind me why I entered the medical profession and where I’m going with it. And for that, I am most grateful.