Articles Review About Doctors and Medicine

Doctor Talk to Me by Anatole Broyard

When it comes to the preference of the physician we would like to examine our most secretive and unmentionable disasters, it has to be someone who gets us, someone we are most comfortable with and someone who is empathetic enough yet a consummate professional doctor. The ethical conducts of doctors bar them from establishing any personal contact with the patient, and by this, it means that they are not expected to connect with the patient emotionally. These so-called ethics sometimes subject them, to treat the patient as an inanimate object and they conduct the treatment sessions like any business transaction. As long as they have delivered their services, they are done for the day.

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However, it takes more than just the sharp needles, stethoscopes and theatre sutures to mend the physical and emotional health of the patient. As Broyard vividly elaborates, the doctors need to be friendly to the patient and as appropriate as possible, character-wise (p. 2). No one would love it to be attended to by a doctor they don't like. The attitude is the magnitude. In the patient's eyes, the doctor has everything, and the doctor has to live up to this expectation. When it comes to the patient's diagnosis and treatment, every inch counts from the style, charisma all the way to word choices. Just the way the doctor wore the cap put Broyard off, and he referred to his prostrate lump as needing a "mandate" investigation (p.2). A patient needs to be confident of the person taking them under the knife, the person viewing the parts they didn't even know they had, and the person whose hands they have literary put their lives in.

A little heartfelt talk between the patient and the doctor momentarily takes off the illness and replaces it with confidence and faith that they are in the right hands. Yes, some situations might be genuinely hopeless, and the patient might as well know this (p.6). But the doctor can make the hell worth living for. The way a doctor communicates a diagnosis or a laboratory result matters more than the result itself. The illness has already distorted the patient, and it will do them a favor if the physician attending to that illness could be a bit subtle about it. The emotional burden of personalizing things with the patient, which these doctors often shun away from could be double presented by that of knowing that they could have helped that person, but they didn't, and he is no more. Attaching a pinch of emotion to the patient through regular talking can work the miracles that the chemo and radiotherapies can't.

Medicine, an Art by Bernadine Healy

The faculty and field of medicine have gradually evolved from merely being a practice to become an artistic work. It mainly incorporates the passion, commitment, and competence of the doctor while demanding that he becomes best at it. Being a doctor, and an excellent one for that matters demands for more than just the knowledge on medicine, pathogens and other anatomical complications. One must possess a mastery of this art coupled up with individuality, morality, and humanity. If it were only up to the knowledge level to make a good doctor, there would have been tons of them, but this artistic combo demands more than that.

A remarkable physician must familiarize himself with his field of work, and even go ahead and add something more to that, intuition. Just like a graphitti artist identifies the street wall he's going to paint, what he will paint and when he will do it, a doctor should have all these aspects figured out. They should be so knowledgeable that they challenge nature and be right about it. The trick behind the mastery is the confidence that whatever one feels is the right thing to do become it. A doctor should be confident and utterly convinced to diagnose a woman with a pregnancy complication at her 40s (Bernadine p.1) even though this is an age when many women are in their menopause.

An artistic doctor should be past the fallacy of generalization and view each patient as unique as they are. A diagnosis doesn't have to be unilateral or universal as every patient's anatomy is individualized, ranging from the culture, tradition, genetics, and physique. A patient should possess unique and personalized attention from the doctor (Bernadine p.2). While at it, the doctor should maintain high moral standards as dictated by the Hippocratic Oath and coupled up with other societal norms. The patient's privacy and well-being are paramount, and the doctor should respect and adhere to this.

Humanity is another artistic view of medical practices. As much as the doctor's work lies in the saving of human lives, they should allow some level of emotion and empathy to crop in. Many may view this as a weakness, but humanity is the strongest aspect of being a doctor (Bernadine p.1). The ability to put one's self in the patient's shoes helps them to realize where it pinches most. These patients sometimes need empathy rather than sympathy and giving them exactly that might bring out the best painting a doctor has ever painted.

First, Do No Harm, and the Patients’ Bill of Rights

Dr. Abassac is no doubt an experienced and knowledgeable doctor, but she most definitely is not an artistic one. She diagnoses Robbie of epilepsy and subjects him to very crude medication that keeps elevating the seizures. A doctor is expected to think beyond the biopsy or any other diagnosis and come up with alternative and more efficient methods of countering the condition. She is overly rude to the parents and belittles their decision making on wanting to try the community dietary program. The patient's bills of rights grant a patient or their guardian a chance to be part of the treatment decisions and by shutting the mum out, Abassac was violating Robbie's right. The boy is too young to tolerate the harsh medication that the doctor has prescribed. The aftermath of these medications even brought forth more complications, infections, and conditions that required more medications to counter the previous one. The dietary approach worked so well, and all these pain Robbie was subjected to turn out to be cruel and unnecessary.

The patient empowerment podcast grants the patients the power to be fully aware of their medical conditions and to question any medical decision made for them. A patient can be handed a record of their illness, research on them, and have a chance to come up with a conclusion upon their findings. Robbie's mum could be very powerful against Dr. Abassac and have a strong say in what she felt was best for her son. An artistic doctor should not be offended when a patient has another point of view, and they should work together to come up to a resolution.

When the arguments about the type of medication, procedure or appointment, surpasses the actual medication talks, the relationship between the doctor and the patient may deteriorate or fail. Every patient wants to be with a doctor who is attentive to their health, emotional and other personal needs. There should exist a professional relationship between the two, but this doesn't necessarily make the doctor over the patient. Changing from one doctor to another can be hectic and stressful, but in some instances, the change is more comfortable than remaining constant with an inconsistent and unreliable doctor. Communication is almost all it takes for a patient to get better.