Choosing A Doctor: Part 1

Before deciding which treatment is best for your illness, you need to find the right doctor. But who is the right doctor for you? Is it the doctor who saves your life or the one who gives you hope? Is it the one who diagnoses your problem right the first time or the one who doesn’t make you feel rushed? Is it the one who explains everything to you in a comforting way or the one who makes all your decisions for you?

Most people equate the right doctor with the right treatment on the basis of the result of the treatment. If the treatment doesn’t work, no matter how friendly and attentive he may have been, the doctor is seen as a failure. If the treatment is successful the doctor, no matter how abrupt or unfriendly he may have been, is regarded as "the best."

You need the right doctor and you need the right treatment. The two are not always found together, but when they are, you stand a better chance of winning.

In spite of advances in neurology and psychology confirming the relationship of mind and body, many in the medical profession prefer to remain focused on biology and chemistry, manipulating tissues and cells to treat diseases, rather than seeing how beliefs and feelings can influence physical states. We need doctors who balance technology with psychology, pharmacology with philosophy, and the results of blood tests and X-rays with your character, your fears, and your expectations. This may appear to be a fanciful wish, but in the face of a serious disease, we want to be cared for as much as we want to be cured.

Science has, indeed, produced some dramatic results. The extent to which sanitation, personal and food hygiene, improved nutrition, pre- and post-natal care and vaccination have prolonged and saved untold millions of lives convinced doctors that science, in whatever form, would eventually rid mankind of all diseases. Advances in anesthesia and surgical technology allow limbs to be sewn back, arteries and organs replaced, and cancers removed. Pharmacological weapons—insulin, antibiotics, and a host of cancer and cardiac drugs—have been developed. More discoveries at the genetic level hold incredible promise for the future. Yet all this technical progress has its disadvantages. The lure of science, and the often miraculous recoveries of people after being administered an antibiotic, convinced doctors that there was almost nothing they could not fix. People, too, have come to believe that most, if not all, diseases can be cured by one drug or other and that all you need is a prescription from your physician. These expectations are often unrealistic. There are some diseases for which there are no cures and no medicines to treat the symptoms. There are many diseases for which there are medicines that can treat the symptoms but not cure the patient.

Specialization has also diminished the opportunity for doctors to build relationships with their patients. The doctor who cannot fathom his patient’s problem invariably sends him or her to a specialist who may, in turn, send them to another specialist. This process may well enhance the study of that particular disease, but it totally ignores the emotions and feelings of the patient.

Doctors may believe it is the medicine they dispense that cures, but it is their mere presence that is often the best medicine. You know this yourself when, no matter how ill or distressed you are, your anxiety level is reduced and you can say, "I feel so much better already," as soon as he or she arrives to attend you.

You want a doctor who makes you feel this way—one who improves your emotional well-being, boosts your confidence and stimulates your will to live. But you also want a doctor who is an expert in your type of illness.

I will develop this discussion in following articles.

If you have any health or illness related questions you would like me to answer, please don’t hesitate to leave a comment. My answers to your questions will be posted on our blog and it is my sincere hope these will be helpful to you.

In light and peace

Joel