How do you deal with the emotions and stress if you lose one of your patients?

It is difficult to lose patients and you never really get used to it. The trade off is that you help so many more people than you lose that you have to focus on that. Also, helping the family through it is important and can help you deal with it as well. You just have to focus on the joy people and their families have when you help heal people. Also, there is always the option of being the type of physician who doesn't deal with critical patients as much. There are so many specialties... think about what fascinates you and what population you want to work with (i.e. children, older adults, young adults, athletes, diabetics, cancer survivors etc..)