Doctor’s Callousness – Is He to be Blamed?

Doctors are routinely accused of being callous towards their patients’ suffering; of treating them like projects to complete. Here’s my perspective, for what it’s worth.

I have always maintained that after a certain while of being in a profession, barring a few exceptions, you become your profession. A construction worker will behave like a construction worker. Doctors are no exception, and you can pretty much tell a doctor apart from, say, a lawyer or a journalist.

I brought this subject up because I am more than a little moved by a recent news story that talks of doctors not being able to empathize with their patients’ suffering. I give you the thread:

http://www.themedguru.com/articles/doctors_lack_empathy_study-86111898.html

Doctors deal with pain and suffering every day of their lives. If they let all the hurt and trauma they experience around them affect them, they’ll go crazy... or become saints.

Instead what it does to them is--since they constantly try to block it all out--it makes them immune to suffering after a while. And doctors NEED to be immune to suffering, and not get carried away in emotions themselves, to be able to do their job objectively.

Medical professionals have got no way out. The best they can do is acclimatize themselves to the misery around them. Harden themselves and not be fazed by the sight of blood and gore like an uninitiated common man would. I mean, if I see a patient getting the surgeon’s scalpel, I’ll pretty much collapse there. Less than a minute of action in the operation theater will be enough to make me run.

But can the doctor take a flight like I can? Like you can? That’s his job. He’s got to perform it, and perform it in a way that saves lives.

Now, I’m not saying that doctors have to be these cruel, unfeeling, objective robots. But they need to shut away their subjective sensitivity when they start their shift. Since they are dealing with lives, doctors' is the most demanding job of them all, one that requires objectivity. In a place where he needs surgical precision and superlative concentration, the last thing a surgeon wants is stupid emotions coming in the way.

Of course, by being sensitive to the patient, the physician might give the moral support, but on the downside, sensitivity can take his mind off his real job, which is to treat the patient. Let the relatives provide the necessary moral support for the patient.

Personally, I’ll never accuse doctors of not being sympathetic enough. I wouldn’t need their sympathy anyway (onus of that lies with my near and dear ones). They can be callous long as they are doing their job right--diagnosing correctly, operating rightly, and prescribing medication precisely. But I’ll raise an eyebrow when they bungle up in their job of saving lives. Falling short of emotions is excusable, playing with lives is not.

By Harpreet Bhagrath

The writer is the Chief Editor at themoneytimes.com

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