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Heart and stethoscope
The physician all but burst into the exam room without so much as glancing in my general direction. “How can I help you?” he asked in stark monotone, his eyes rapidly scanning my chart.
“For starters, you could introduce yourself,” I replied, extending my hand.
He blurted out his official title, never pausing from his perusal of my records to make eye contact, let alone reciprocate with a handshake.
“I’m Philip,” I said, finally lowering my hand, which I doubt he ever saw.
“It says here . . .” he began, reading from the chart.
“Never mind what it says there,” I interrupted. “The way things are going here, I won’t be needing your services.”
That managed to rivet his attention to me rather than my medical record or his admittedly packed patient schedule. The surprised look on the man’s face suggested it was the first time someone called him to task on his bedside manner.
“Is there a problem?”
“Yes, doctor, there is a problem. And it’s not the same one you’re reading about in my chart,” I insisted.
A bit brash on my part? Clearly. While no excuse, having taught in medical school and family practice residencies, my comfort level in asserting myself with physicians exceeds that of most patients. And, ironically, most of the teaching I did with doctors in training focused on effective patient interaction skills, which this fellow clearly lacked or elected to set aside. Nonetheless, the majority of us, faced with similar circumstances, would simply put up with such behavior and complain about it later.
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Human-Focused Service
Granted, many professionals, particularly in health and human services, are overworked and frequently exposed to patients or clients who are demanding and difficult. And our corporate health care system breeds burnout and moral injury among its best and brightest. But, as a professional provider myself, that’s just not sufficient cause to morph into a cold automaton. Doctors, lawyers, counselors, nurses, ministers—just about any highly trained and skilled provider of human-focused services—sometimes forget they have one job that precedes all others. And that is, first and foremost, to be a person.
Hospitals, clinics, courtrooms and professional offices can be sufficiently dehumanizing and psychologically intimidating on their own, often leaving one feeling like a spot on the wall. Robotic providers add insult to this injury. When we seek the ministrations of health care professionals, in particular, we commonly do so from a posture of emotional vulnerability and dependence. The last thing we need is someone who acts more like a toad, albeit a technically skilled one, than a Homo sapiens.
When feeling sick or troubled and needing assistance, it isn’t easy to assert one’s self and risk alienating the professional you depend on for sensitive and competent care. This added burden only amplifies the normal anxieties associated with being ill or having personal problems.
Nor does it help when one is labeled as one’s malady, such as being referred to as a “diabetic” or a “depressive.” People are far more than what ails them. Persons have diabetes or suffer from depression, but those conditions do not define who they are in total.
Petty distinction? Well, being treated like an object or a disease rather than a person is more than dehumanizing. There is strong research evidence that the emotional tone of the professional-patient relationship directly influences treatment or intervention outcomes. As one physician educator noted, the one “drug” that all doctors use in their medical practice is themselves, their humanity (or lack of it).
Whether a professional is probing a person’s body, mind, spirit or legal affairs, the right to enter does not come from having a lot of letters after one’s name. It needs to be earned. And, at a minimum, the entry fee should be to treat that individual with common human decency.
As for the physician I saw, to his credit, he came around after our tense exchange, made a sincere effort to connect with me as a person, and even apologized for being on cruise control. He became a person first and a doctor second. And that’s the correct order.
For more, visit philipchard.com.
