Cav's Place

Since my last post was also filed under Health, I remembered I had this rant planned for a long time…

The study that first made me want to write it is also quite pointless if you look at the general idea, of course patients will be happier with doctors that suit their expectations, but there were a couple of things that really bothered me.
One is the supposed finding that patient-centered patients treated by doctor-centered doctors were less dissatisfied than doctor-centered patients treated by patient-centered doctors. That is a potentially dangerous idea since it makes it seem safer for a doctor to take a doctor-centered approach when not exactly knowing the patient’s expectations, or at the very least gives those who already believe that approach to be the correct one an excuse for it, saying there’s less risk involved in it.
But the other thing, the idea that some people want their doctors to take the reins and basically order them around, is what bothered me the most and what I meant to talk about here in the first place.

I don’t know about you, but I find myself rather attached to my own body, literally… Don’t get me wrong, I’m not fond of it and wouldn’t be using it if I’d have had any say in it in the beginning, but since I find myself quite stuck with it I’d much rather be the one deciding what’ll be done to it, thank you very much.
That said, I have to wonder what the people who would rather have their doctor decide for them are thinking, since the first thing that comes to mind is that they’re not thinking at all… Even if you take into account the fact that your doctor (hopefully) knows more about the strictly medical aspects of your problem than you do, they don’t know exactly what you consider as “feeling well”, what side effects you’d find tolerable and for how long, what substances and procedures you’d find acceptable and in what conditions and many other such things. They couldn’t know these things as well as you do even if you’d spell it out for them, not to mention that such a talk would take quite a long time and likely cover areas that would be completely irrelevant to your current problem.

From my point of view, a doctor’s first job is to provide an accurate diagnosis, then, regardless of the seriousness of the condition, to give the patient a few different options for treatment, even when their chances of success and perhaps even the definition of said “success” vary greatly. They should also take into account any treatment options the patient suggests and discuss them openly, since they could simply be things they didn’t think of. Then they could perhaps state which treatment option they think is best for the current situation, but leave the final decision entirely up to the patient since it’s their body that’ll be affected by it!
Basically, I think a doctor should advise and perform the tasks the patient can’t perform alone, but never make decisions for the patient as long as said patient is able to process information and express their wishes.
Besides, I think even those doctor-centered patients that I can’t wrap my mind around would make this work the way they want it to work. They could just ignore everything else and only take the advice the doctor offers about what they consider to be the best solution, therefore still refuse to make up their own minds. But having been told all that information might prove useful later even for them, even if only a small part of it will linger in some corner of their minds…

I hate it when studies suggest levelling the playing field to the least common denominator of cognitive ability… It encourages people to think less and to encourage others to think even less than they do themselves, which is a certain way to drag humankind even further down… Then again, it’s also a good way to ensure certain few individuals continue their ascension through this rotten society we built for ourselves, since the less people think, the more they’ll let others get away with…