Long before the adoption of the draft law reform Healthcare (and regardless of whether if it succeeds), has changed how doctors and patients interact. Years ago (long before that I began to practice medicine), if you went with a doctor with a problem, you were told what to do - and you did. None of the questions are asked. There was no "informed consent", no discussion on the risks and benefits of a particular medication or procedure. The best of the knowledge of the patient, the doctor knew that everything there is to know about the human body and all that could go wrong with it. How could it possibly something question, he says?
Jump to 2011. If I do not explain what I am, why I do it, the risks involved and any other treatments (if available) - also called "informed consent" - I am breaking the law. New medical discoveries daily - published several times in the secular press (i.e., Morning News programs) or even faster, on the internet before that there is still a chance for the medical community to understand the implications. Many of these changes are for the better, some steps so (internet is full of incorrect, or at least incomplete, medical information). But the bottom line is the same: the days of telling patients what to do, without doubt, have been for a long time before becoming a doctor.
I remembered recently, through medical blog a friend, the meaning of the word "doctor". Doctor comes from the Latin "docere", which means "to teach". Being that a doctor is, in large part, on the teaching of patients understand their bodies, the medical issues that affect them and helping them to understand the available treatments. It's my job to take all the medical facts I learned, to treat them, organize, filter the non-relevant, apply to the particular hand problem, reinterpreted in a form that can be understood by someone who, in most cases, is not a doctor, and to communicate this information with success - all teachers must do the same. No doctor or teacher, that I know that going through this step by step each time that a decision should be made. With practice, it becomes automatic. But anyway that you look at, it is an amazing process and the responsibility that cannot be taken lightly.
I have said earlier that the patient of education is a "large part" of the meaning be a doctor. But this is not the only instruction that occurs. It is very easy to forget, with the responsibility that we are given, only to provide the best care, we must allow ourselves to be taught. The best teachers of any subject, in my experience, are those that involve the student in education and adjust the teaching method to adapt to the student. More importantly, a teacher must recognize that no matter how much known about a particular topic, the more can always be learned. The doctors are no exception.
The doctor-Patient relationship is not, should be, a one-way street. Of course, there will be situations where the physician should dictate because care that the patient is physically unable to participate in the decision-making process (i.e., emergency threatening life or during the operation once the patient is asleep). It is also reasonable to assume that any teacher must know and understand the subject more in detail than the student. But in the doctor-patient interactions, both sides can and should contribute. Inform the doctor if something does not make sense for you. Tell the doctor if a drug or a prescribed treatment has caused you disorder or has already failed in the past. In other words, "teaching" the doctor about you. It is the only way that he or she can to ensure that you get appropriate treatment.
And it is the only way that the doctor-Patient relationship can really work.
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