An overnight meditation retreat prompted ophthalmologist Robert M. Kinast to reflect on the emotional toll of treating severe eye injuries and the ways he had kept patients’ suffering at a distance. He writes that meditation and self-inquiry have helped him bring greater presence to patient care.
Kinast, who practices in Portland, Oregon, attended a retreat in the Santa Cruz Mountains last fall hoping for a break from work. During an overnight meditation, the phrase “all-nighter” brought to mind not college or socializing but traumatic cases he had treated: patients whose eyes were damaged by gunfire, street violence and accidents involving objects including knives, fireworks and windshields.
Ophthalmologists are often called in at night to try to repair ruptured eyes, sometimes with little hope of saving sight. Kinast describes the work as demanding precision, speed and endurance while caring for patients and leading an exhausted operating-room team.
He says he would sometimes retreat to a locker room or bathroom to cry after witnessing injuries. In front of patients, he tried to suppress his emotions, concerned that showing distress might undermine their confidence in him. While he believed some patients might not want to see their surgeon cry before an operation, he came to recognize that hardening himself also limited his ability to process the trauma.
During the retreat’s overnight meditation, Kinast realized he had not fully made space to grieve the losses and damage he had witnessed. As others joined a meditative chant at dawn, he sat apart and mourned. He says that experience brought him gratitude and respect for physicians who care for trauma patients, including ophthalmologists working alongside emergency physicians and trauma surgeons.
Kinast writes that meditation helped him distinguish emotional openness from the rigid restraint he had relied on to appear strong. With time and awareness, he says, he became less afraid of being overwhelmed by patients’ suffering and better able to remain present with them.
Since the retreat, he has used a simple grounding ritual in clinic: when he sits down in an examination room, he notices his feet on the floor. He describes returning attention to the present after becoming distracted or overwhelmed as part of the practice, and says each patient offers an opportunity to do so.
Kinast says trauma call remains his least favorite part of medicine, though often its most meaningful. He sees traumatic eye injuries a few times a year and acknowledges that physicians in other fields encounter this kind of suffering every day. He closes by thanking trauma physicians and surgeons who care for patients with devastating injuries.
Sources: STAT News.