Something Precious Lost?

How well do you know your doctor? Even more important, how well does your doctor know you? In Knocking on Heaven’s Door: A Better Way to Death Katy Butler writes that more and more doctors practice as skilled technicians with their own agendas. She states that “something precious–our old faith in a doctor’s calling, perhaps, or in healing that is more than a financial transaction or a reflexive fixing of broken parts–had been lost.”

Dr. Arnold Relman relates something similar as he describes his experience as a patient. He tells his story of breaking his neck and spending weeks in the hospital, then additional time in rehabilitation therapy.
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He writes that, “when there is no emergency, new technologies and electronic record-keeping affect how doctors do their work. Attention to the masses of data generated by laboratory and imaging studies has shifted their focus away from the patient. Doctors now spend more time with their computers than at the bedside.”

Having spent a lot of time in hospitals as both a chaplain and a hospice social worker,  I’ve seen the trend both Butler and Relman report. On the other hand, I’ve observed my mother’s hospice doctor take as much time as he and she need to exchange necessary information and make her feel comfortable. For elderly people and others with difficulty communicating and processing information, it’s advisable to have a caregiver or family member present so everyone involved in the patient’s care has all the necessary information.  Changes in our reimbursement system for medical care could facilitate better relationships with patients and return a more human touch to medicine, but that’s a subject for another day.