You have gone through right track

 Last week end, my wife has uneventfully closed her office. Now she is busy dealing with the remaining business. Giving notice to the vendors, businesses etc. There seem to be a mountain of papers to be sorted and dealt with. Most of the medical charts are as thick as small books since they are the record for over ten years. Legislation says they should be kept somewhere at least for 5 years. So there will be a lot of things for her to do in the coming couple of months.

She has been given a lot of gifts for token of gratitude and farewell by her patients. Bouquets, sweets etc. Recalling of my case 13 years ago, I was a bit jealous at her and uttered about it to her. She answered most of patients had been attending to her clinic for as long as 20 years and were like family members.

Most impressively, she told she had done best to give right therapy, medical and psychotherapeutic, to them. Against such will of her, most of them told her it had been most grateful to her that she listened what they told at the outpatient. I could see a hue of disappointment in her countenance when she told it to me.

But it was the most rewarding as well as encouraging remark to doctors from own patients, I believe. The doctor and patient relationship could be realized, needless to say, with communication between them. Communication starts with listening to others. In the doctor and patient relationship, the former should listen to what the latter, full of pain, anxiety and worry, says to the former. As the great theologist Martin Buber used to say, prayer starts with listening. It is the most important thing in clinical medicine but one of the lessons often forgotten due to the busy tasks or duties of doctors etc.

Only in her small clinic not pursuing only efficiency, it might be possible. Her attitude to listen to what they say, however, has been approved by her patients. 

So don't be discouraged but you have gone through right track as a psychiatrist.

At the waiting room, with one of the bouquets she received...