The caring doctor

Patients often criticize doctors for being unemotional and distant . Because we are taught to maintain a professional barrier , we may seem to be cold and uncaring, but the reality is that doctors have a heart too - we're human after all !Ironically, sometimes it's this humanness which backfires. Thus, we will often identify with some of our patients - especially when they're of the same age group, or come from a similar background. We sometimes need to break bad news to them , and when they start crying on hearing this, we get emotionally upset as well.  We may then end up saying things to try to console the patient, which he may then misinterpret . This can come back to haunt us , because the patient feels that the doctor was too frank and overstepped his professional boundary.I recently had a patient who got pregnant after IVF , and I sent her to an ultrasound clinic for a viability scan at 6 weeks, to confirm her pregnancy was progressing well.  Her sonographer was worried that she couldn't see a beating heart, and told her - There is a possibility that this may not be a healthy pregnancy.  The patient broke down and came running to me in tears the same evening , saying - The radiologist told me my baby is dead !Interestingly, the sonographer is an extremely good doctor who is normally very careful . Because she's a radiologist, she would never provide a clinical interpretation to a patient. Her standard answer is, "I have done the scan and my job is to rep...
Source: Dr.Malpani's Blog - Category: Reproduction Medicine Source Type: blogs