"You have good bedroom manners."

It is a common practice for medical schools to award faculty and residents with teaching awards. But in my opinion, we need to bestow several awards upon patients I am privileged to see every day in clinic. These people are the TRUE teachers ... regular folks who let a student like me in to their lives to bumble my way through a history and physical in trying to figure out how best I can help. And I can say with absolute certainty that if it wasn't for the everyday patient and his/her timely comments, I wouldn't have been able to fare as well as I have been through medical school. Just when I need encouragement the most --- after scoring poorly on an exam (yet again ...) that I spent hours preparing for or after being chastised by an attending for not knowing the answer to a question he/she asked me --- a patient comes through for me. I recall a particularly tough day last summer when a middle-aged man at the VA told me one morning, "You know ... of all the people here at the hospital, you've made me feel the most comfortable." I thanked him quickly before tears hit my eyes. And just this week, an elderly lady with multiple medical problems put her hand on my arm and said, "You have good bedroom manners, and you're going to make a fine doctor some day." I politely thanked her and grinned on my way out of the room ... for I do believe she meant to say "bedside manners"!