That One Patient by Ellen de Visser

As nurses, we’re taught to keep our feelings in check to be professional, but the reality is that most of us have had at least one special patient who touched our hearts deeply.

That healthcare providers would ever admit to learning from their patients came as a shock to popular Dutch health-science journalist Ellen de Visser. Back in 2017, she attended her brother-in-law’s funeral and met his oncologist, who spoke fondly about the relationship she had developed with de Visser’s brother-in-law: how they had “become great friends” and that she had “learned a great deal” from him.

De Visser decided to explore this concept in her column for the Dutch newspaper de Volkskrant, envisioning a six-column series.

She found that doctors, nurses, physical therapists, psychologists, and ethicists were surprisingly eager to talk about the emotional bonds they had formed with their patients and what this meant for their practice.

Instead of just six columns, she soon had a book, compiling 90 short essays written by providers of every type, including immunologist Anthony Fauci, M.D.

That One Patient was first published in Dutch in 2019, but it was translated into English in 2020 by Brant Annable.

The essays address many serious medical and ethical issues, including euthanasia, which is legal in the Netherlands. We read about doctors who missed a diagnosis and still carry regrets, and nurses who developed long-term relationships with patients that enabled them to really listen in a way that other providers couldn’t.

Fauci’s essay describes receiving a thank-you from an Ebola patient he treated while wearing a full hazmat suit; the facial shield didn’t block the patient’s ability to see how much Fauci cared.

As a public health nurse, I saw many frail older adults in one-hour hypertension and blood diabetes clinics throughout my service area. It wasn’t until I visited one of these patients at home that I was able to see his life through his eyes and understand that the weekly visits he made to my office provided a bulwark against his many deep losses.

That one home visit made me realize that it wasn’t the blood pressure read-ing in my office that was most important to him — it was the little bit of chatter, a story, a smile, and some well-worn advice to show that I was there for him and still cared. Intellectually, I’d known this all along, but now, I made the effort to always put it into practice and give each patient a little extra time. It changed the way I viewed what I did.

That One Patient is one of the finest books I’ve read about the meaning of healthcare. Each essay reminded me why I had wanted to be a nurse, and what I’ve gained from a lifetime of caring.

CHRISTINE CONTILLO, RN, BSN, PHN, is a public health nurse with more than 40 years of experience, ranging from infants to geriatrics. She enjoys volunteering for medical missions.