Increased Patient Responsibility

Atul Gawande in his article “When the Doctor Makes Mistakes” exposes the mystery, uncertainty and fallibility of medicine in true stories that involve real patients. In a society where attorneys protect hospitals and physicians from zealous trials from clients following medical errors, doctors make mistakes is a testimony that Gawande a representative of other doctors speak openly about failures within the medical fields. In this article, Gawande exposes those errors with an intention of showing the entire society and specifically those within the medicine field that when errors are hidden, learning is squelched and those within the system are provided with an opportunity to continue committing the same errors. What you find when you critically analyse Gawande, “When Doctors Make Mistakes essay is how messy and uncertain medicine turns out to be. Throughout the entire article you experience the havoc within the medicine field as the inexperienced doctor misapplies a central line in a patient.

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

All too often in regards to medical treatment, physicians are taught everything known about the scientific approaches to disease but still fail to realize the important details of how the disease impacts the individual. Many physicians do not show empathy to their patients and instead just focus on the current diagnosis and the probable outcome. This creates a divide between patient and provider and can even lead to negative feelings of the patient that far outweigh the diagnosis itself. A feeling of hopelessness and despair may accompany the empty feeling that comes with failing to explore the patient’s perspective on care. In this essay, Parrish states,

"Johns Hopkins patient safety experts have calculated that more than 250,000 deaths per year are due to medical error…" (John Hopkins Medicine). This soaring number has caused medical errors to become the third leading cause of death in the United States. For many people, medicine seems foreign and unknown. People who have lost loved ones due to medical error desperately look for a reason, and many times that blame falls upon doctors. Media has put a negative connotation on doctors as well, causing their reputation to plummet whenever a hospital procedure turns badly. A renown surgeon and author, Atul Gawande, uses his knowledge and experience to give people a new perspective on medicine. In the article "When Doctors Make Mistakes," Gawande uses rhetorical appeals: ethos, pathos, and logos to prove the need for a change in the medical systems and procedures. He analyzes how the public looks at doctors, giving a new perspective to enlighten the reader that even the best doctors can make mistakes.

As described by Dr. Atul Gawande in his book Complications, medicine “is an imperfect science, an enterprise of constantly changing knowledge… fallible individuals” making medicine different from other scientific fields

According to the Institute of Medicine, “At least 44,000 people, and perhaps as many as 98,000 people, die in hospitals each year as a result of medical errors” (Kohn et al.). Despite the unfortunate consequences, medical errors provide an important foundation for medicine. An immense uncertainty envelopes the medical field, and frequent leaps must be made. Some of these ventures are prosperous; however, many render unsuccessful. In Complications, Atul Gawande crafts an alluring view of the medical unknown using tales of his personal medical mistakes. Through the use of ethos, logos, and pathos, Atul Gawande argues that medicine’s vast uncertainty has beneficial influence upon society.

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

- When you think of a doctor, what comes to mind? Someone who does everything in their power to save lives might be one of the thoughts. But what if the patients’ of these doctors death is incurable, and no medical involvement can change that fact, than what becomes the role of a doctor?

Sometimes physicians go so far as to make patients feel belittled and helpless. Patients, in turn, are relatively passive and accommodating, at least while they are with their doctors"(du Pre 53).

ADHD, defiance disorder, pregnancy, these are just few of the things medicalized in the West (Davies 1995). With the rising prestige of Doctors in the 19th century, came a widening of the gap of knowledge between Doctors and the general population (Davies 1995). Doctors have kept a sort of lock on medical knowledge, enabling them to medicalize all sorts of “issues” aided by the idea of the medical mystique. But with the emergence of medicalization and cures that are being searched for by Doctors, a new problem has arisen. This fixation on curing illnesses has led to Doctors viewing patients as experiments and not as human beings, this is seen especially in technologically advanced societies as exemplified in the movie Wit. In addition to this new problem, there are clear establishments of hierarchy between medical professionals such as Doctors and nurses as well as the emotional detachments with the patients which can lead to patients feeling left out and alone.

Physicians are Flawed Heroes: Vulnerable to Human Imperfections The Father of Modern Medicine, William Osler, once stated “The good physician treats the disease; the great physician treats the patient who has the disease.” Could a famous physician be vulnerable as well to a doctor-patient relation? Nobody is impeccable and every person has their unique tragic flaws.

At last, Gawande understands that experiencing vulnerabilities in this field are infrequently the main constants. Surgeons can prepare themselves best by tolerating the defects of medication, yet never neglecting to take a stab at flawlessness. This book was worth reading as it made me gain knowledge about the world of medicine, and how doctors know little in medicine since medicine is a large field.

Debate regarding the role of nurses in promoting patient choices has continued to attract attention in health care research. Patients usually experience personal vulnerability due to their illness. Additionally, they are vulnerable to threats that are part of the institutional processes in the healthcare system (Negarandeh et al. 2006). Despite these vulnerabilities, patients generally have the right to make competent, independent, and informed choices regarding their health care depending on their capacity to execute their moral discretion. These patient choices and decisions are influenced by different aspects of the personal characteristics of the patient and by the nurse-patient relationship (Sondrup et al. 2011). Nursing best practice guidelines require that nurses give one-to-one decision-making support regarding care to all patients. According to the Nursing and

Although it 's deeper philosophical meanings and historical validity may be endlessly debated, Foucault 's trend setting 1963 work Birth of the Clinic is an optimistic, even Whiggish exercise in post-modernity. Foucault detailed an emerging structure of systematised clinical practice that grew out of the French Revolution, one which had in which ultimately been to the benefit of the citizenry. The increasingly uncertain position of the traditional, mystical, Aristotelian physician was saved in a supposed age of rationality through the growth of medical teaching, civil structures of patient care, and an overriding trust in the perception (or, in his words, "gaze") of a select group of varied individuals1. This was, in short, everything that defined the stereotype of mid-twentieth century Western medicine2, bar compartmentalised laboratory research into disease and pathology.

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