What happened to our good doctors?
The topic of doctors has always aroused great angst in me. As a child I hated going to the doctor and my mother would have to take me different routes to the doctor because if I knew where I was going, I would throw a fit. And who wouldn't? They put you on a high stool with the bottom out and then stuck a needle into the tender flesh of your bottom. The hospitals in China had less privacy. They didn't stick you in a waiting room to wonder if you were left there to rot for the next three hours. It was just a long line of people. And when the physician saw you the line behind you could probably see what was going on, and the person prone on the cot next to his desk. And they are very swift about it, knowing the long line of people would never end, and if you were going to get your blood drawn, blood was drawn very professionally and quickly and q-tips were given to staunch the minute hole instead of a cotton swab and bandaid.
But the great angst I experience with doctors here (U.S. of A.) is probably their upbringing. Because I recently graduated from college and knew quite a few who were headed towards doctordom and they are no good pills. Some of them to follow in their parent's footsteps. Some to chase the green giant of money. (I was a freshman in '04 and one of my acquaintances at the time was on the doctor track. She proclaimed that if Bush was re-elected she would become an OBGYN and perform illegal abortions. Alas it came to pass that Bush was re-elected, but she decided that OBGYN-dom did not pull in as much money as other specialties. Her mother should know, being a psychiatrist.) Some because they wanted an M.D. after their names. Some because they didn't know what else to do, had taken the MCATS and gotten a good score, and grandma thinks being a whitecoat is prestigious. The few who seemed in it to help people took a year off after college to do social work related things. Where did the good seeds go?
Doctors here have forgotten the fine art of dealing with a patient. I feel as if I am fighting a battle every time I go in, and that battle is for information. What do I have? How do you know that's what I have? Don't I have a right to be suspicious? It's like the kind of trust you put in your parents, but then you grow up and realize parents don't know everything. Neither do doctors. Yet they are stingy with their information, unwilling to explain things-- or if they do, get carried away and use medical jargon and then come back to the real world and apologize for using medical jargon, then retract information. I would much rather a doctor explain in jargon what exactly is going on than to say: "...But that doesn't matter. You wouldn't understand, and it has nothing to do with you." Stop assuming that I am not intelligent enough to work through the intricacies of your words to get to the bottom of what's wrong with my body.
My friend T. who is on his way to becoming a brilliant doctor (but not of psychiatry) wants to deal with the human heart. He is not a great conversationalist. He does not listen particularly well. I tell him this and that a doctor needs to be able to listen well. He says impatiently that he wants to get straight to the matter, solve the physical illness. I believe all illness is a mix of the physical and the psychological. He'll need the patience, and the gentleness. But does he really? Most of the doctors I've been to hasn't got it. It's not a requirement.
What kind of supreme shit do they teach our doctors nowadays? I forget that science is a biased art sometimes. T. tells me recently that they were presented with a study about violence and race. The statistics showed that black people reported abusive white people more often than they reported abusive black people. His roommate came to the conclusion that this was because black people were so used to black on black violence they didn't notice it to report it. I bet my left ear the study wasn't done by black people. And how did they know how many abuses went unreported? (since it went unreported?) Did it have anything to do with violence in the family (less likely to report family members than strangers?) What was this study supposed to do for these med students anyway? My previous family doctor, before I found my current love of my life doctor, doubted evolution. He asked me if I really believed man came from monkeys. He had a sign on his wall that read: THE HIPPOCRATIC OATH. I WILL NOT PERFORM ABORTIONS OR ASSIST MY PATIENTS IN SUICIDE. I WILL NOT HAVE ILLICIT RELATIONS WITH MY PATIENTS, ESPECIALLY OF A SEXUAL NATURE.
I would not go to that man for an abortion. He's a GENERAL PRACTITIONER. I don't trust general practitioners with my womb. And isn't the sexual relations line a bit much? It almost sounds like he's trying to reassure himself he will not slip up and touch the leg of a particularly appealing patient. Every time I went to him he would ask me in an accusatory tone if I was pregnant. Non. Je suis pas. That is why I am now at my current, fabulous, beautiful, smart female doctor.
The problem is, med school, or any kind of school, does not really teach a person to be compassionate. That perhaps stems from family and friends. What happened to our compassionate doctors? Why have I met so few of them? If we expect artists to be by nature creative, then we should expect our doctors (our healers), to be by nature compassionate. I can think of no other job where one wields so much power and has adults feeling like children again, at the utter mercy of the elements.
But the great angst I experience with doctors here (U.S. of A.) is probably their upbringing. Because I recently graduated from college and knew quite a few who were headed towards doctordom and they are no good pills. Some of them to follow in their parent's footsteps. Some to chase the green giant of money. (I was a freshman in '04 and one of my acquaintances at the time was on the doctor track. She proclaimed that if Bush was re-elected she would become an OBGYN and perform illegal abortions. Alas it came to pass that Bush was re-elected, but she decided that OBGYN-dom did not pull in as much money as other specialties. Her mother should know, being a psychiatrist.) Some because they wanted an M.D. after their names. Some because they didn't know what else to do, had taken the MCATS and gotten a good score, and grandma thinks being a whitecoat is prestigious. The few who seemed in it to help people took a year off after college to do social work related things. Where did the good seeds go?
Doctors here have forgotten the fine art of dealing with a patient. I feel as if I am fighting a battle every time I go in, and that battle is for information. What do I have? How do you know that's what I have? Don't I have a right to be suspicious? It's like the kind of trust you put in your parents, but then you grow up and realize parents don't know everything. Neither do doctors. Yet they are stingy with their information, unwilling to explain things-- or if they do, get carried away and use medical jargon and then come back to the real world and apologize for using medical jargon, then retract information. I would much rather a doctor explain in jargon what exactly is going on than to say: "...But that doesn't matter. You wouldn't understand, and it has nothing to do with you." Stop assuming that I am not intelligent enough to work through the intricacies of your words to get to the bottom of what's wrong with my body.
My friend T. who is on his way to becoming a brilliant doctor (but not of psychiatry) wants to deal with the human heart. He is not a great conversationalist. He does not listen particularly well. I tell him this and that a doctor needs to be able to listen well. He says impatiently that he wants to get straight to the matter, solve the physical illness. I believe all illness is a mix of the physical and the psychological. He'll need the patience, and the gentleness. But does he really? Most of the doctors I've been to hasn't got it. It's not a requirement.
What kind of supreme shit do they teach our doctors nowadays? I forget that science is a biased art sometimes. T. tells me recently that they were presented with a study about violence and race. The statistics showed that black people reported abusive white people more often than they reported abusive black people. His roommate came to the conclusion that this was because black people were so used to black on black violence they didn't notice it to report it. I bet my left ear the study wasn't done by black people. And how did they know how many abuses went unreported? (since it went unreported?) Did it have anything to do with violence in the family (less likely to report family members than strangers?) What was this study supposed to do for these med students anyway? My previous family doctor, before I found my current love of my life doctor, doubted evolution. He asked me if I really believed man came from monkeys. He had a sign on his wall that read: THE HIPPOCRATIC OATH. I WILL NOT PERFORM ABORTIONS OR ASSIST MY PATIENTS IN SUICIDE. I WILL NOT HAVE ILLICIT RELATIONS WITH MY PATIENTS, ESPECIALLY OF A SEXUAL NATURE.
I would not go to that man for an abortion. He's a GENERAL PRACTITIONER. I don't trust general practitioners with my womb. And isn't the sexual relations line a bit much? It almost sounds like he's trying to reassure himself he will not slip up and touch the leg of a particularly appealing patient. Every time I went to him he would ask me in an accusatory tone if I was pregnant. Non. Je suis pas. That is why I am now at my current, fabulous, beautiful, smart female doctor.
The problem is, med school, or any kind of school, does not really teach a person to be compassionate. That perhaps stems from family and friends. What happened to our compassionate doctors? Why have I met so few of them? If we expect artists to be by nature creative, then we should expect our doctors (our healers), to be by nature compassionate. I can think of no other job where one wields so much power and has adults feeling like children again, at the utter mercy of the elements.