How to use a stethoscope

Emer Forde is a GP in Poole and a GP Programme Director for NHSE South East (Wessex).

Listen.

Listen through the diaphragm,
listen through the bell.
Through me, you’ll hear the lub-dub of a beating heart,
the heave of a heavy spirit,
whisperings and murmurs of a broken life.

Pay attention to the whooshing of a weakened valve,
to life force flowing in the wrong direction.

Feel the beat of the pulse,
high volume or weak and thready,
a steady plod or an erratic wobble,
atrial misfiring.
Interpret the rhythm of this person’s life.

***

Listen to the boundaries of a person’s breath,
their space for air,
their capacity for expansion.

Pay attention to squeaks and stridor,
to wet crackles or pulling Velcro,
the sounds of footsteps on crispy snow,
lungs fibrosed and stiffened.

Listen for the silence,
ominous when there should be sound.
Inhomogeneous lesions, opacities, masses,
the radiologist will call them,
choking the trajectory of this person’s life.

***
Listen again.
Shut out the world and still your mind.
I offer you a conduit
to the beat, the breath, of a person’s life.

Featured image by Hush Naidoo Jade Photography on Unsplash