A few weeks ago, the author
wrote about how to keep one’s doctor happy. The current article now focuses on
how it is a doctor’s responsibility to love his patient’s as well. As it is a
give and take phenomenon, it might not look like it is very hard to make
patients happy. Although, sometimes there can be issues with patient satisfaction,
and at times, it can be nearly impossible. It all depends on the doctor’s own
inner life as a medical practitioner and a human being. The key to medicine, to
be a beloved doctor, is to love one’s patients.
But this often can be a huge
task. People can be remarkably difficult to love. They are often angry, uncommunicative,
cruel, manipulative and even tend be dishonest with others (not just about the
patients, but in general) Humans resist love almost as fiercely as they desire
it. They push one another away with profanity. They tend to anger each other
with their attitude, until someone lashes out, reminding one of a basic frailty
in human beings.
The question which arises in
a doctor’s mind is how to do it, to love these people, especially when they
come to a doctor in the chaos of his work in the clinic or hospital or to love
them when a doctor is weary and a patient has strange complaints in the middle
of the night. After all, it is not easy to love somebody who, despite the
doctor’s suggestions on all of his previous visits, continues to ignore the
advice, not take his prescriptions and not change his lifestyle. Sometimes it
feels like it is impossible to love one’s patients.
It all depends on one’s
perspective. According to many, loving someone can mean having warm emotions
for that person, feeling good about someone or having a satisfying relationship
with someone. If that were the case, loving someone would be very difficult, because
people in the modern times have reconstructed and deconstructed the word love
until it is barely recognizable.
Everybody wants love to be a
feeling he has, when in fact, love must be an action to show. When someone’s
children are loud and disobedient, when they scream and throw tantrums, it is
often difficult to feel good about them. But the person still feeds them, bathes
them, sings to them, and puts them to bed with kisses in hope of a better day,
one in which the terrible phase has passed.
Whatever a wife feels about her
angry drunk husband, a father about his unrestricted college-going son, or
people about their manipulative relatives, when they behave with competence,
when they do what is right, and seek the best for such people, they show love
for them. This is love borne of action, and not emotion. This is the love that
is, in some ways, more steady and true.
Similarly, for a doctor,
this way, a cycle is born. When a doctor acts towards a patient with competence,
it shows the doctor’s love towards the patient. And when the doctor does that,
he learns in time to see the patients less as numbers and more as people. An
unbelievable thing then happens. Patients start loving the doctor back, making
the magic happen.
Doctors talk to their
patients, the patients talk to the doctors, and they come together. A Doctor
asks patients about their family, and the patients ask him about his. He
inquires about the reason of their sadness, and they tell him things that can shake
one to the core and reminds of how one can have nothing to complain about when
held up to their life story of neglect and loss. And because a doctor listens
(sometimes even hug them or pray for them), they know a doctor is human, too.
And they come to love the doctor even more.
In time, one can find new,
wonderful ways to love. Over the years, one can learn that everyone wants to
hear how beautiful one’s baby is, because every baby is, for the parents, the
most beautiful one in the world. Children, generally considered afraid of a
doctor, can also recognize this love. They also can then look at the doctor,
smile, and reach for the doctor to hold them. And the doctor is also the
recipient of thousands of blessings.
This way, a doctor also
tends to get less and less bothered by little things. A doctor too likes to drink
his tea his tea while it is still hot. A doctor still gets annoyed when he is
busy. But a doctor is a work in progress. If a doctor can order a cup of tea
for his patient while having his own, he should. One tends to have a wonderful
time when life moves on smoothly and the doctor sits back and hears an
occasional patient’s life story or tell a joke. This way, the love grows. By
acting in love, love increases.
Love is not a thing to be
taught in the classroom, and there is nothing in the world that can measure it.
It is impossible to apply evidence-based evaluations to love. But once a doctor
allows it to start and carry forward, it would only grow more and more. And the
doctor’s satisfaction scores would probably go up too.
No comments:
Post a Comment