An inability to recognize faces
This is a little offbeat for OTP, but I thought I'd share an article that I found interesting. It's relevant in that I see dozens of people on any given day while in the pharmacy. It's only in the last 18 months or so that I've developed the ability to remember nearly anyone's name and face after one interaction. I don't know how or why this happened, but it has. Sometimes when it's really busy and I'm talking to people and I'm not actually cataloging what's going on, I miss their name and face, but most of the time this isn't the case. This strange ability has manifested itself outside of work as well. Perhaps using these neural pathways constantly has made it easier, I don't know. I do know that it is a skill that has to be worked at.
I've found that if you don't fully engage all of your mental energies on the person in front of you, they won't stick. And when you've got their name and face, their drug therapies are easy to incorporate as well. Again, this isn't something I actively try to do — it's impossible to memorize everyone's name, face, drug therapy, voice, etc., but you can absorb a surprising amount with a limited amount of effort once you have their basics all down. Investing yourself in them emotionally certainly makes a difference when it comes to recollection.
In any event, in this light, I was struck by how much it would truly suck to not be able to recognize faces. Ever.
Developmental prosopagnosia, in which an individual has face blindness apparently from birth, was thought to be extremely rare. The first case, in fact, wasn't diagnosed until 1976. But cognitive neuroscientists Bradley Duchaine of University College London and Ken Nakayama of Harvard University say the condition may be far more common than believed.
As common as 2% of the population. Even stranger is that the people that suffer from developmental prosopagnosia apparently have intact face recognition areas in the brain.
I couldn't imagine not being able to recognize faces in my line of work. It is central to making a connection with a patient: people respond to you more positively if you can recall their name, their medications, and any other relevant information readily, even if you have to look up the exact specifics later. It makes them feel as though you truly care. And in my case, I actually do, though admittedly, there was a time in the beginning when I was just a technician that I didn't.
[tags]Medicine, pharmacy, customer service, developmental prosopagnosia, face blindness, interpersonal communication[/tags]
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