Four highly motivated Grade 10 students spent a portion of their Christmas holiday writing submissions for the Immerse Education Essay Competition in the hope of winning a 100% scholarship to attend a summer course at Cambridge University in the UK. The competition is a challenging one: entrants must pick one question from a list of eighteen controversial topics and have only 500 words to defend their answer. Essays must be fully referenced with footnotes and bibliography. While we all have our fingers crossed for their success, we are quite simply hugely proud of them for taking the initiative to enter this competition – well done!
Below are two entrants’ essays on this topic ordered alphabetically by name of author:
What makes a good Doctor?
Being a medical professional is considered one of the noble and ancient vocations in society. However, considering the plurality of people who become doctors, there must be a plethora of ways to go about being a doctor. This raises the question – what makes a good doctor?
It appears to be universally agreed upon and that medical professionals must put the patients well-being before all else in a quest to minimise suffering. The Hippocratic oath is, despite its age, considered an ethical benchmark even today. It seems so ingrained in all our understanding that it is barely questioned by patients and doctors alike. So when people, be it doctors or patients, talk about ‘good doctors’, what do they actually expect to see from them? More often than not, one will hear the words ‘competence’ and ‘empathy’ being muttered. Although this may seem a bit simplistic, come to think of it, those concepts may well be more intertwined than meets the eye. A competent doctor arrives at a correct and timely diagnosis, initiates an adequate and effective treatment. Key to what patients and their relatives consider great consultations is that their respective concerns, ideas and expectations are addressed, respected and incorporated into the decision making. Empathy forms the missing link. It can allow for a more profound rapport to be established between doctors and patients, helping to obtain a more detailed medical history and aid diagnostics. Obedience to a certain treatment can be improved by tailoring it to a patient’s needs, which, in turn, will improve outcomes. Maintaining a patient centered approach will help decide upon an adequate treatment in the first place. It is safe to say that throughout all stages of the patient’s journey, the idea of empathy has the potential to make the difference between a doctor and a good doctor.
Having said all this, it seems by no means easy to display empathy at all times. Increasing specialisation and ever more detailed knowledge and understanding of subspecialities causes ever steeper knowledge gradients to make communication between doctors and patients difficult. This in turn prevents medical professionals from being able to fully dedicate themselves to patients. The increasing availability of in part questionable information and data can both empower patients or destroy the doctor-patient relationship. Similarly, the uncontested status of doctors as ‘demigods in a white coat’ appears to slowly decrease, rendering them to be seen as service providers rather than allies at times. These are changes that affect multiple aspects of society. Therefore, I would conclude that a doctor, as a person and profession, is a reflection of society as a whole. Hence, apart from detailed knowledge and profound understanding of their scientific field, traits that make a good doctor are the same that make a good person and empathy is found at the very core of it. A good doctor is someone who goes above and beyond the call of duty to put the well-being of his or her peers above their own. Someone who, regardless of their own cultural background, political ideology and ethnic heritage, goes out of their way to understand their patients. Finally, someone who, when needed, even forgoes the very science they dedicate their lives to, in order to make a patient feel well. After all, doctors treat patients, not conditions.
Nele B.
Bibliography:
- Dr. med. B. Hibbeler, “Was ist ein ‘guter’ Arzt”, Ärzteblatt 51-52 (2011) 28th December 2020
- Saint George University. Unknown Author, “What makes a good doctor?”, 04.02.2018
[ https://www.sgu.edu/blog/medical/what-makes-a-good-doctor/ last accessed: 3rd January 2021] - Harvard Blogs. Unknown Author, “What makes a good doctor? Can we measure it?”, 20.03.2014
[ https://blogs.sph.harvard.edu/ashish-jha/2014/03/20/what-makes-a-good-doctor-and-can-we-mea
sure-it/ last accessed: 3rd january 2021] - The Lancet. Unknown Author, “What makes a good doctor?”, 28.08.2010
[ https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6736(10)61317-7/fulltext#articleInfo
rmation last accessed: 29th December 2020] - Physicians Practice. M. Byington, “What are patients looking for in a doctor?”, 10.05.2017
[ https://www.physicianspractice.com/view/what-are-patients-looking-physician last accessed: 2nd
January 2021]
What makes a good Doctor?
A doctor is defined as a person who has been trained in medical science, whose job is to treat people who are ill or injured. According to this definition, what makes you a doctor is clear: the licences and certificates. However, the question of what makes a good doctor is much broader, and for this reason this essay will focus on the comparison between empathy, objectivity and technical competence in relation to the patients recovery and well-being.
Firstly, objectivity helps doctors, to a certain extent, to be professionally distant from their patients and apply skills and knowledge rather than emotions to make judgements about treatment for an effective recovery. For example, a heart surgeon uses high amounts of skill during a surgery. When getting emotionally engaged with a patient, the physician can make a biased decision that might not be helpful towards recovery. Emotional detachment is helpful for the doctor too, as the involvement can be difficult to handle mentally. Nevertheless, professionals have stated that complete objectivity is not even possible to achieve and that physicians will always make decisions slightly based upon emotions, experiences and their view of right and wrong.
However, people have argued that empathy should be desired rather than objectivity anyways. This consists of listening to a patient but also communicating in a way that can be understood. Medicine should be about treating a person rather than simply curing an illness, and should be taken with a more holistic approach, as our emotional side is what makes us differ from a computer. Whilst a machine might have the technical competence to recognize symptoms and cure the illness, we as humans should ensure that we cure the patient. Many patients want an understanding physician, as this gives them a sense of security. Studies have shown that when this is achieved, the recovery process has a higher chance of being effective. This is partially because up to 30% of all illnesses are somatization, where the mind is involved in the physical condition and only when we relieve the mind we can treat the illness. Moreover, when we look at the patients as people we can prevent further illnesses in the long term by treating more than just the symptoms.
A doctor can be differentiated from a good doctor by the balanced coexistence of objectivity and empathy. Whilst the objective side of a person is needed in making effective decisions, the empathic side is what distinguishes between treating a condition and curing a person. However, this must be carefully balanced, for too much objectivity leads to being very distant and too much empathy leads to faulty decision making, both ultimately being harmful to a patient. How this is balanced, however, ranges based on which field you are in, as a cardiologist performs a different job than a family doctor. With this in mind, we should evaluate the contents of studying medicine and consider teaching the students how to reach their own balance, by letting them deal with patients at an early stage, as there is no blueprint to becoming a good doctor. Each individual must find a balance of their own, to make a positive impact on the field and to become the best doctor they can possibly be.
Maren S.
Bibliography:
“Doctor_1 Noun – Definition, Pictures, Pronunciation And Usage Notes | Oxford Advanced Learner’s
Dictionary At Oxfordlearnersdictionaries.Com”, Oxfordlearnersdictionaries.Com , 2021
https://www.oxfordlearnersdictionaries.com/definition/english/doctor_1 [accessed 21 December 2020]
Hirsch, Elliot, “The Role Of Empathy In Medicine: A Medical Student’s Perspective”, Journal Of Ethics |
American Medical Association , 2021
[accessed 20 December 2020]
Ross, Donald, “The Objectivity Illusion In Medical Practice”, Association For Psychological Science –
APS , 2021 https://www.psychologicalscience.org/observer/the-objectivity-illusion-in-medical-practice
(accessed 22 December 2020)
“What Makes A Good Doctor, And Can We Measure It?”, An Ounce Of Evidence | Health Policy , 2021
<https://blogs.sph.harvard.edu/ashish-jha/2014/03/20/what-makes-a-good-doctor-and-can-we-measure-it/ (accessed 20 December 2020)