A Service Industry
I still remember my pediatrician who saw me for my earache when I was 8 years old. I remember his laugh, and how reverant my mother seemed of him. As patients, we place a monumental amount of significance on our physicians. Now that I’m on the other end of things, it feels unethical not to reciprocate the value placed on us by patients. While such sentiments are often voiced at our white coat ceremonies and commencements, this style of practice is not the norm.
I realize that I am uncomfortable viewing medicine strictly as a service industry. When the bottom line is control of population-level parameters and efficiency of the system, we are trained to see only the similarities in people, lumping them into classes and categories. What bothers me is that our patients are not distorting and stereotyping us accordingly. How can I view someone as simply part of the herd, when he or she views me as someone memorable?
It is therefore up to you to view your patient as one person. One person with sound mind and a will to come to you. Medicine does not teach you to view patients as a herd. But, it gives you a framework to design your thought process about your approach to patient care. It is not the system who dictates to you how important it is to treat patients as individuals. This decision will come from with in. We are trained to recognize diseases and patterns in symptomology; the classifications are needed because medicine in general is too broad. But, now we are reaching a place where we can individualize medical therapies and tailor regimens for the patient.