The Hidden Sentiment Of A Doctor

They serve as pillars of wisdom and guidance while exhibiting communication adroitness with care teams and patients to engineer top-notch medical care. To maintain high standards, effective medical professionals are constantly taking in new information through continuing education, placing providers at the pinnacle of knowledge. Moreover, physicians require affective aptitude as they must convey empathy during patient interactions. All these attributes draw me to seek the personal challenge and resulting responsibilities that are demanded. I desire to become an important contribution to society in a field I am passionate

Despite the idea of physicians as, by definition, healers, they often play an unbalanced role in the patient-doctor relationship. Doctors may have a disproportionate amount of power in their relationship with the patient; a patient's life may literally be in their hands. The patient-doctor relationship thus often manifests as a microcosm of a wider hierarchy of medicine present in today's healthcare system. Even small things, like a doctor’s white coat, can reinforce this hierarchy; patients view doctors who wear a white coat as having greater authority and expertise (Boutin-Foster, Foster, & Konopasek,

Prominently featured in the mission statements of virtually of every medical school and medical institution in the world is the call for empathetic doctors. These institutions wish to train medical professionals that possess qualities of sympathy and compassion, and hospitals wish to employ health professionals that showcase similar qualities. The reality, however, is starkly different, as physicians, jaded by what they have seen in the medical world, lose the qualities that drove them to medicine in the first place. In Frank Huyler’s “The Blood of Strangers,” a collection of short stories from his time as a physician in the emergency room, Huyler uses the literary techniques of irony and imagery to depict the reality of the world of a medical professional. While Huyler provides several examples of both techniques in his accounts, moments from “A Difference of Opinion” and “The Secret” in particular stand out. Huyler uses irony and imagery in these two pieces to describe how medical professionals have lost their sense of compassion and empathy due to being jaded and desensitized by the awful incidents they have witnessed during their careers.

The PBS NOVA documentary “Doctors’ Diaries” gives the everyday person insight into the grueling yet rewarding life of seven doctors’ journey through medical school, and into their career. The viewer follows the life of seven medical students: Tom Tarter who is an emergency room physician, Luanda Grazette, a cardiologist, David Friedman, an ophthalmologist and heath researcher, Jane Leibschutz who is an internal medicine and primary care taker, Elliot Bennett-Guerrero who is an anesthesiologist, Cheryl Dorsey, a pediatrician, and Jay Bonner who is a psychiatrist. Throughout the film, the seven doctors face happiness, hardships, heartbreak, and personal disappoint.

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,

This role does not only allow me to shadow doctors while they engage with patients, providing an opportunity to gain invaluable information and advises. This role requires most of my attention towards patients’ needs, which helps to establish a professional relationship and understand what they expect a doctor to be: caring and sensitive but decisive. As English is not my first language, my bilingual skills give me a chance to help some patients through being a translator. It is not the dream job anyone imagines, hours of sleepless shifts, tremendous responsibility with no room for errors as dealing with fragile lives and not products. This only further strengthens my decision to pursue medicine. What I most admire is how empathetic a doctor can be yet unaffected during a critical situation. It is more than just a skill; it is a talent.

Defined by a physician’s understanding of their patient’s perspective, physician empathy enhances a patient’s perception of being helped, improves patient feelings of empowerment, and increases patient perceptions of a social support network. (source 4) Studies have shown that when physicians are running low on empathy, patients take significantly longer to recover from illnesses and become less likely to follow treatment recommendations, suggesting an inverse relationship between the prevalence of burnout and measures of patient satisfaction with medical care. (source 5) Decreased feelings of empathy and a diminished relationship between the doctor and the patient has also been proven to lead to patient neglect in which healthcare staff fail to maintain the standards of optimal patient care. Such findings highlight the importance of burnout to leaders of the medical field and to administrators that have responsibility for the workplace environment. (source

For as long as I could remember, I have seen my father rushing to the hospital in a white coat, answering pagers in the middle of important family conversations and attending night calls even in the most terrible weather. I had always wondered; what could be so important that it belittles every other responsibility in his life. It was only after many years of anguish and protests that it finally made sense to me. This defining moment of realization occurred when I first met a patient in his office. I saw how the gratitude in the patient’s eyes can provide a sense of fulfillment that triumphs all other feelings in the universe. It was human life that was most important. Being a doctor does not make you a mere healer but also gives you the responsibility of a caregiver. I had never felt more proud of my father and that was the day I felt the urge to relive this feeling many times over. It was there in that moment that I decided to pursue a career in medicine.

I don’t come from a background that is heavily associated with medicine, nor have I ever really been immersed in a medical setting. As a result, I do not have a first-hand experience of what it is like to practice medicine. However, since my early years,

She was shaking uncontrollably. Her eyes glowed bright red as waterfalls emerged from her face as she began to explain her predicament. “I’m so scared, and I can’t tell my momma.” At the age of 13, my friend confessed that she was pregnant, and she was thinking about getting an abortion. Being a child myself, I did the only thing I know how to do –comfort her. This experience taught me that sometimes silence is more important than having a reaction. Whether a friend or patient, physicians are responsible for displaying empathy towards their patients during their journey through unfamiliar, life-altering circumstances even if that just means listening.

When asked what trait a physician bears in the 21st century, most would agree with compassion. Pierre Elias author of the narrative essay, “Insensible Losses: When The Medical Community Forgets The Family”, argues that physicians may be compassionate when it comes to their patients, but “lack a systematic approach to communicating with families when a patient’s health deteriorates unexpectedly, requiring a change in care providers” (Elias 707). Pierre Elias is a medical student from Duke University. He is nearing the end of his clinical rotations when he is forced by his inner moral conscience to deliver difficult news to a patient’s family whom no other physician makes time for.

An expectation of an osteopathic physician is to express empathy for all patients, regardless of ethnicity, socioeconomic status, or beliefs. As a student volunteer, I traveled to underserved communities in the Dominican Republic and Panama where I learned that medicine has the power​ to unify people, build bridges, and communicate and collaborate across cultures. Though I had challenged my own sense of reality before, walking in the shoes of patients, many of whom lived in impoverished conditions, gave me to opportunity to understand just how different two lives can be. I was able to differentiate between up-close empathy and distant sympathy. Despite a language barrier, I examined and diagnosed at least twenty patients each day, conceptualizing the different steps a physician must take when interacting with a patient. I am now involved in a student-run clinic that provides a multitude of healthcare services to a rural,

Pulse, is an anthology, which gives the readers an insight from numerous authors’ point of view when it comes to dealing with patient treatment and urgent health problems. Inside of Pulse there is 63 different perspectives which all portray a different aspect in the medical field, which gives the reader a descriptive and vivid detail of what is happening within a couple of pages. Through out Pulse, the readers see how the patient impacts the doctor. As a result, it shows how the doctors deal with patients and is able to keep it professional, even though they might become emotionally attach.

While examining the interpersonal interactions between doctors and patients it is clear that doctors completely control the talk time. Doctors ask a lot of "yes" or "no" answered questions, not allowing the patient to express very much emotional information. This is one of the ways that doctors, in this type of environment, try to stay emotionally detached from patients. An example of this can also be found in the movie when all the experienced doctors only refer to patients as their certain illnesses. These doctors feel that names, emotions, hobbies, etc. are just distractions that get in the way of their professional duties.

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