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 A new blog to contain answers to prompts |
| Prompt: “Don’t worry, I’m a doctor. ... Besides, whatever I do to you is okay because I’m a doctor. Trust me. Now, on a scale of one to ten, how painful would you say this is?” Jasun Ether, The Beasts of Success What do you think about doctors? How right are they with treatments and do you think that they may believe they are infallible? ------ Before I write anything, let me say that my grandfather, in whose house I mostly grew up, was a doctor. So was my late husband. I knew their friends and I've noticed how some of those doctors believed in what they were doing and how one of them still cried in big tears over a patient he lost because he had given him a shot not knowing about his allergies and the man died right there in his office, immediately. Now that I'm old and have to see my doctors periodically, without first consulting with my husband anymore, I can look at them from the patients' points of view as well. A patient wants or maybe even needs his doctor to say, "I know what's ailing you, and I know how to fix it." No such thing exists! This is because medicine is an art as well as a science. The weight of responsibility on the doctors is huge. That responsibility can even make them think and say: " I am a doctor. Doctors save lives. Therefore, I must be right and you'd better obey me." While this may be well-intentioned, it also shows a dangerous sense of being godlike. Moreover, society has elevated the doctors to a higher level by trusting them and accepting their word as being absolutely correct. Also, as patients, when we are sick and vulnerable, we crave confidence. Confidence by our doctors, however, can only be a performance. This is because medical training rewards decisiveness over humility. Then, there's that emotional burden. Imagine telling a patient, "I thought this was a routine case, but I was wrong. You have only a few months of life left.” Here, the relationship is not professional anymore. It has become personal. So, now the good news. Medicine has begun to confront itself with peer-review, evidence-based practice, and some disciplinary action within the medical societies. Some doctors, nowadays, even encourage transparency among them. That infallible doctor myth, therefore, is being thrown out the door. And I surely believe that their greatest strength is in their courage to say to a patient, "I was wrong. So let's figure this out together." In fact, doctors are brilliant, most of them dedicated, and some of them have spent at least a couple of decades, if not more, on their education and learning about emergencies and such. They may as well be our modern oracles, but only depending on how far the medical knowledge has evolved and depending on how much they really know about themselves. |
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