The Discipline of Sitting
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May 27, 2026
On my first week as a resident on service, I noticed the stool before I noticed the attending. Small and woven—like you bring to a kid’s soccer game—Dr. N carried it folded under his arm. On rounds he set it down, sanitized it with care, and carried it inside the patient’s room, unfolded it and sat. At first, I assumed it was a quirk. An older man with bad knees. As the days passed, I saw it as discipline. Dr. N refused to perch on the edge of a computer stand, or hover at the doorway. He sat, eye-level with patients, knees almost touching… He listened before he spoke. He let silences stretch. The stool was not about comfort, but professionalism. In a hospital calibrated for speed and length-of-stay metrics, the stool felt subversive.
Residency has honed my efficiency… I can pre-round on ten patients in under an hour, synthesize labs, and craft problem-based plans by sunrise. The system rewards throughput. Dashboards track performance; administrators send pleading emails, reminding us that beds are precious. The gravitational pull towards becoming a cog in the machine is strong. Professionalism meant being on time, being accurate, being accountable. Following protocols and respecting hierarchies. But watching Dr. N, I began to see another dimension: professionalism as resistance to dehumanization.
One morning we saw Ms. H, a woman in her fifties, admitted for a bad diabetic foot wound. She had been readmitted three times in two months. I presented her as a “bounce-back,” focusing on resistant organisms and uncontrolled diabetes.
Dr. N nodded, then picked up his stool. Inside the room, he sat down. “Ms. H,” he said, “tell me what’s been hardest since you left the hospital last time.” After a long pause, she admitted she feared amputation. She was her mother’s sole caregiver; if she couldn’t walk, both would suffer. The plan shifted. We involved physical therapy for home safety evaluations, arranged for home nursing, and social support. Her readmission risk was not just about treating an infection or managing blood sugar. It was about dignity, and fear.
Later, I asked about the stool. “As an early attending,” he told me, “I realized I was spending more time looking at screens than faces. I didn’t like who that was making me. So, I brought in a stool. If I sit, I slow down. If I slow down, I listen.” He smiled, “The system won’t remind you to do that. You have to remind yourself.” His words unsettled me, because they were true. The structural pressures, productivity benchmarks, quality metrics, aren’t inherently malicious. Many are explicitly designed to improve safety and accountability. But, they create a culture where speed equals competence. Sitting felt indulgent.
Sitting did not make rounds shorter. Sometimes, it made them longer. But over time, our discharges became smoother, our follow-up plans more realistic. Patients seemed more engaged in shared decision-making. I felt less like a conveyor belt operator, and more like a Physician.
I began to incorporate this lesson into my practice. One evening, I evaluated a patient with diabetic ketoacidosis. The team rounded quickly, it was snowing, we wanted to get the medical students home. The patient could barely engage, offering one- to two-word answers. Yet, when I returned alone and sat at his bedside, unhurried, he gradually opened up. In that quiet conversation, he shared a profound fear and deep shame that his insulin noncompliance had ruined his life. I was reminded again that professionalism lies not only in clinical management but in creating the trust that allows patients to speak their truth.
The stool became, for me, a symbol of professional identity. It reminded me that medicine is not only the efficient application of evidence, but a moral practice grounded in trust. Trust built in moments that are easily cut short; the extra question, the pause after a patient’s voice shakes. As a resident, I can’t control hospital policy or reimbursement structures. I can’t redesign the Health care system. But I can choose how I inhabit my role within it. I can choose to sit.
In carrying that small stool from room to room, Dr. N was not rejecting efficiency; he was redefining it. He showed me that true efficiency includes trust, that quality care cannot be measured solely in minutes saved, beds turned over. Now when I feel myself rushing, I picture that stool. I remind myself that sometimes the most professional thing I can do is to slow down, and sit.
