Everyday as a Doctor I Ask Myself If a Puppy Would Do More for Patients Than I Can

I became a doctor because I wanted to help people. Like “supporting the community” and “doing what’s right,” the idea of “helping people” can be so vague that it borders on meaningless. And so, having entered medicine with good intentions but without specifics about whom I wanted to help or how I would go about doing it, I would soon learn just how hard it was to truly help anyone at all. The truth is that the idea of a sick person coming to see a doctor, being diagnosed and treated, and later leaving cured and satisfied is somewhat quaint. These days, patients often arrive with chronic problems that we might be able to patch up, but we cannot cure. We can make sure our patients suffering from dementia take their medications on time, for example, but there is little we can do to treat their underlying brain disease. We can lower our diabetic patients’ blood sugars when they get too high, but we have nothing to actually cure their diabetes itself. And when our patients with end-stage cancer arrive seeking relief from their cancer pain, we know that even our best treatments will do nothing to stop the progression of their real problem. [time-brightcove not-tgx=”true”] And so, early on in my career—frustrated by our collective inability to help our patients to the degree that I wished we could—I began playing a game I call “Medical Degree versus Puppy Dog.” After each patient I saw, I would ask m...
Source: TIME: Health - Category: Consumer Health News Authors: Tags: Uncategorized freelance Health Care Source Type: news