Evaluation Of The Doctor Patient Relationship

Katz states, “the conviction that physicians should decide what is best for their patients, and, therefore, that the authority and power to do so should remain bested in them, continued to have deep hold on the practices of the medical profession “(214).

There are many social factors that can impact on the Doctor Patient relationships everything from race to gender. To break it down and find five, I started with Doctors personal views he is under pressure to be ethical when he may not entirely be accepting of a person’s beliefs or sexuality. For instance a doctor may be homophobic and have a patient attend surgery asking for advice on practicing safe sex and being HIV aware. Following on from this may be a patients confidence in doctors due to race for example a person who has racist issues would not feel comfortable attending a foreign doctors surgery. To find a third I would have to say gender being a female I tend to talk easier to a female doctor, which persists problems as my female doctor only works three days a week so I put off going to see the male doctor so therefore remain ill longer. My fourth factor is age, as the doctor could be old and the patient adolescent. This would impact on different generations living different lifestyles and changing societies. “Adolescence is indeed a tempestuous period”, (Thorne, B & Lambers.1998). Finally I find language barriers a major social factor as if you can’t understand what your doctor is saying to you it has complications in treatment and there is not always a translator available.

The concept of paternalism involves the notion that one person, generally a person in a position of authority, has the right to intervene and override the autonomy of another person. In terms of historical context, medicine is one area in which paternalism has occurred frequently. Throughout the ages, physicians and doctors have been placed in a position of authority in which they acted upon the bodies of their patients without those patients’ full knowledge or understanding. However, there has been a distinct shift in modern times regarding paternalism. With the publication of The Silent World of Doctor and Patient, Jay Katz advocated for a new attention to be given to the autonomous control of the patient. Katz noted that historically speaking,

his or her patients feel better. However, there are cases where a doctor can only do so much.

Rarely any physician intends to harm patients when he or she provides treatment to them. Patients see physicians and specialists in full faith that they will get help with a condition. What complicates the patient-doctor relationship is that the outcome of each patient’s treatment is different because of individual health conditions and the course of treatment chosen by the doctor. Problems arise when a patient is not satisfied with care provided by the doctor or in extreme cases when a patient dies. Since most of the time it is hard to clearly determine whether the outcome was solely a result of the course of treatment chosen by the doctor or whether other factors played a role too, quite often patients take their

- The doctor’s role is to determine what medication the patient needs. It is his/ her responsibility to prescribe the correct medication, the dose, and the type of medication needed and the correct amount to be administered.

The issue of doctor patient relationships has become more and more prevalent in our world today. It is hard to draw a clear line in deciding what the appropriate roles are of both the patient and the medical professional. The claim that the paternalistic

Luke’s one-dimensional view of power is centred on this concept and in order to develop understanding as to how power is achieved and maintained within society, an analyses of decision-making in the public arena must be made. It also contests that the group that holds and maintains power can be determined by looking at who succeeds when there is political conflict. (Lukes, 1974:12) It emphasises the importance of the observed behaviour of those in power and analyses the effects on the wider community when making decisions (Lukes 1974:25) Lukes spends a lot of time discussing Dahl’s theory of power through his own theory. The power held by a specific group may be either, ‘overt’ or ‘covert’ but the triumph of power is at the point is during the decision-making process and when these decision have been made, especially, those of the controversial nature of ones centred around the most conflict (Lukes, 1974:13) The one dimensional view of power proposed by Lukes is the most straightforward of the three dimensions. In a way, it is also the easiest to observe, as the power structure through decision-making is more translucent and has a lot of clear definable features.

The patient's idea of the physician is in contrast to the narcissistic patient's contempt, and disregard for the physician, who is keeping a sense of superiority over illness. Only the most senior physician in

During a physician's practice in medicine, a variety of issues can occur that will result in a consultation. Some of them issues can be ethical.

American Hospital Association Patient’s Bill of Rights The evolution of hospitals is the greatest thing that history has to offer. Today, many people depend on hospitals for their health, and they cannot imagine how life would be like without hospitals. The American Hospital Association advocates for the representation of non-profit hospitals in the United States.

To extend on the idea of power, Luke points out three ways of perceiving power, which are other representations of the attributes of power that A sets power over B when A impacts B in a style that is different from B’s. The concept of Steven Luke’s decision-making power, particularizes with the politics of the

We have to contend, in the exercise of our personal power, with the influences of such power-channels in our environments and how they add to, limit or distort our exercise of power - e.g. hierarchies, coalitions,

The doctor-patient relationship always has been and will remain an essential basis of care, in which high quality information is gathered and procedures are made as well as provided. This relationship is a critical foundation to medical ethics that all doctors should attempt to follow and live by. Patients must also have confidence in their physicians to trust the solutions and work around created to counter act certain illnesses and disease. Doctor-patient relationships can directly be observed in both the stories and poems of Dr. William Carlos Williams as well as in the clinical tales of Dr. Oliver Sacks. Both of these doctors have very similar and diverse relationships with multiple patients

Imagine you are injured or sick and have sought a doctor’s help. Although you trusted your doctor, something, something seemingly very in control of the doctor, went wrong. You are angry and confused, but also think of the commonality of medical malpractice. So, why do doctors, who are supposed to help, harm? Though many flaws influence it, malpractice can be, and often is unintentional. Most doctors aren’t trained to harm their patients. Inexperience and lack of medical discovery led to unintentional suffering of the patient. Personal flaws, like lack of willingness to abandon previous medical methods and shortcomings in communication also harm patients. Further reasons why doctors harm are socio-medical understandings that breed hate, prejudices stemming from a society’s belief about certain people, such as the medical practice under the Nazi regime. Additionally, displayed in the case of Ignác Semmelweis, judgement of one to oneself can be detrimental to any progress one’s ideas could make. We will examine these concepts through Jerome Groopman’s “Flesh-and-Blood Decision Making”, Sherwin Nuland’s The Doctors’ Plague and Barbara Bachrach’s “In the Name of Public Health”. Those who practice medicine are, unfortunately, unfree from the imperfections that plague all of humanity. Through these intimate and varied faults, doctors do harm.