08-04-2007, 06:34 AM
In the June issue of the GME e-Letter, we referenced an essay in JAMA (extract) by Paul Rousseau, MD, who observed attendings, residents, and students on hospital teaching rounds from the perspective of a caring family member:
I have no doubt that as the medical team approached her cubicle, she was simply the 52-year old scleroderma patient in the intensive care unit.
She was irrelevant; her disease was not. While she was receiving the best technical care in the world, the individual that she was seemed forgotten, her personhood tossed to the side in lieu of the intricacies of pathophysiology.
Dr. Rousseau's observations lead to a series of questions about our profession:
Has medicine become such a business that the human factor has been relegated to the trash heap? Has the paucity of autonomy or even a falling income usurped the humanistic qualities of our worthy profession? Could it be that we lack empathic and compassionate mentors to plant humanistic seeds among young, impressionable physicians? Are we simply selecting the wrong people for medical school? Or does the rigorous training that ensues during the residency years generate an emotional egress of what attracted us to this principled and honorable profession in the first place: to relieve the suffering of a fellow human being, be it physical, social, spiritual, or emotional?
In his summary, he challenges us "to return medicine to its Oslerian and Hippocratic roots, roots that care for the patient in all domains."
We asked readers of the e-Letter for their thoughts on the essay and whether modern medical care has lost its way and, perhaps, its soul. Below are the responses we received, with identifying information removed. (Note: These views may not necessarily reflect those of the AMA.)
I have no doubt that as the medical team approached her cubicle, she was simply the 52-year old scleroderma patient in the intensive care unit.
She was irrelevant; her disease was not. While she was receiving the best technical care in the world, the individual that she was seemed forgotten, her personhood tossed to the side in lieu of the intricacies of pathophysiology.
Dr. Rousseau's observations lead to a series of questions about our profession:
Has medicine become such a business that the human factor has been relegated to the trash heap? Has the paucity of autonomy or even a falling income usurped the humanistic qualities of our worthy profession? Could it be that we lack empathic and compassionate mentors to plant humanistic seeds among young, impressionable physicians? Are we simply selecting the wrong people for medical school? Or does the rigorous training that ensues during the residency years generate an emotional egress of what attracted us to this principled and honorable profession in the first place: to relieve the suffering of a fellow human being, be it physical, social, spiritual, or emotional?
In his summary, he challenges us "to return medicine to its Oslerian and Hippocratic roots, roots that care for the patient in all domains."
We asked readers of the e-Letter for their thoughts on the essay and whether modern medical care has lost its way and, perhaps, its soul. Below are the responses we received, with identifying information removed. (Note: These views may not necessarily reflect those of the AMA.)