The Role Of A Doctor Is More Than A Caregiver Of Health

A common value shared throughout this community is allowing your patients to trust you with their health needs. Allowing them to trust you builds a relationship with the patients, as well as others in your profession.

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,

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

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.

Discussion how “words of comfort” encapsulated the books take on medicine, I feel that these words are showing us how in medicine being a caring and sympathetic health care provider is important. (Verghese, 2009) In the book relationships with patients is shown to be as important as the care they are providing. Knowing how much technology and medicine has advanced in the last years I feel that no matter how good the scientific side of it is there has to be a relationship with the health care providers and patients. It is proven that a positive relationship helps a patient recover faster. Relationships can help in many ways just having someone to talk to, give feedback, and encouragement are all way relationships are able to benefit and speed up recovery. (Brainline, 2015)

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.

A pivotal aspect of receiving quality medical care is being able to communicate your health concerns and have confidence and trust in your doctor, which is essentially the doctor patient relationship. Yet, this

“The only appropriate and realistic model of the Dr.‐patient relationship is paternalism. Doctors are the medical experts; most patients have little, if any, reliable medical knowledge; implicit trust in one’s physician is essential to the healing process; and doctors have the responsibility for our health and therefore have the duty to make all the important medical decisions.” Critically assess that claim.

Patients seek medical attention for preventative measures, as well as, diagnostic measures. Patients must have a trusting rapport with their collaborative medical team, as the nurses and the doctors are the people who they trust their lives with. Patients do not always present to hospitals, urgent cares, walk-in clinics, or even doctor’s offices only when they are sick; patients visit to ensure their good health will continue, treatment regimens are of benefit, changes that may be needed in regimen. When someone thinks of a patient they may think of some of these characteristics: illness, disease, hospital, medications, health, and prevention.

A patient must have confidence in the competence of their physician and must feel that they can confide in him or her. This is always good, when you feel comfortable in talking to your physician things are so much better and it makes you feel secure. As, with my doctor I have been with her since I was sixteen years of age and we have a magnificent physician-patient relationship.At appointments we talk about

As a professional administering and delegating care to a patient you have a great responsibility to communicate with them. The world of healthcare is large and to the general public is utterly confusing. As the professional you need make the patient feel secure about the care they are receiving. It also lends itself to informing the families of the patient as well. If the patient is confused, it’ the job of the professional to be the teacher. It’s not enough for the information to be given, the information needs to be interpreted.

That situation with the younger doctor made me think of the reading Narrative Medicine which is about aiming to introduce into everyday medical practice the use of narrative (story telling) as an instrument to gather and understand information about the patient's history and illness. Having knowledge of their psychological and physical state is very helpful. When Dr. Charon spoke with the 36-year-old Dominican man, she didn’t take over the conversation. She listened and it touched him because he says, “No one has ever let me do this before.” This made me really think about my family’s interactions with doctors and nurses since my teen years to present. Her diabetes began to spiral out of control and it never really stabilized. Over the course of the years, she was hospitalized

At first glance, it is easy to see how even this could be perceived to be fiduciary in nature, whereby patients often confide in and depend on their doctor who they believe will act in their best interests. Even so, there is a major difference between the doctor-patient relationship and the established fiduciary relationships.

Doctors have always been thought of as the saviors of mankind, the healers, and caretakers of our utter existence. Even ancient civilizations revered the medicine men as having special power to protect life. The trust of a physician is sacred. This is why

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