Through her series of flashbacks, Professor Bearing gradually becomes aware that she is guilty of the same inhumanity that readers are so apt to critique her primary care providers for exhibiting. In a sense of new self-awareness, she contextualizes Dr. Jason Posner’s view of patients as specimens with a scene in which she, herself, fails to appreciate or even recognize the humanity of her students. Ultimately, she realizes her behaviors as a professor were not that much different than those she is experiencing from her medical team.
In our interview for JHR, Edson described the essential nature of the human interaction between patient and clinician when she reflected on her own job as an aide in the physical therapy department of a community hospital, and as a physical therapy patient after separating her shoulder: “What makes me believe that I can try? It is my relationship with you. That really is all that I have. You make me feel that way – that I can try” Edson believes that Nurse Monahan successfully practices such a relationship ethic with Professor Bearing. While she may not have the academic intelligence of the research doctors or the scholarly and accomplished Professor Bearing, she is the backbone of the research hospital due to her combined skill and sensitivity.