 The barrier to change is not too little caring; it is too much complexity.”
—Bill Gates
There’s an interesting story in today’s New York Times, ‘Have You Ever Been in Psychotherapy, Doctor?’ The piece has to do with medical empathy—whether a physician (in this case, a psychiatry resident) who’s never gone through a health condition can truly appreciate what a patient is experiencing.
While I place the greatest trust in a doctor’s scientific knowledge of a medical condition, the story brought to mind something my father lived through more a half a century ago. In 1956, dad was a busy 38-year-old physician with a wife and several small children when he was stricken with encephalomyelitis. Almost everyone counted him out. The viral infection, which his doctors never sourced, caused near paralysis in his legs.
After emerging from a five-day coma, the doctors told him he might never walk. To this information, he responded, “I’ve got five young kids, I’m walking again.” And walk he did, employing an aggressive exercise therapy program to recover. He returned to a fulltime medical practice and also had three more children, me included. In later years, I heard many stories about people who came forward to help dad and our family during those very difficult times.
He often told me that while the disease was devastating to him then and its residue in later years; he truly believed that it brought to him a greater understanding of what his sick patients had to endure. The illness made him a better doctor and a better person, he said.
I saw this. While I remember dad being ever the “just tell me what’s wrong” clinician, I also sensed in him a heightened level of sympathy when it came to patient care, and indeed, to those struggling with an illness in general. An outlook no doubt born from the trials of his own serious sickness. Although they could seldom articulate why, I understood when his patients told me: “your father keeps me going.” Even in healthcare, what goes around comes around.
15%—Percent of patients who say doctors voice empathy during an office visit.
(Journal of General Internal Medicine, 2007) |
