The culture of medicine needs to change

Image via Wikipedia

by SHARON BAHRYCH, PA-C, MPH in the 23 Nov 2011 article at KevinMD.com

’ve been involved in clinical medicine for more than 20 years and during this time I’ve come across numerous situations that created stress, or emotional upheaval within myself, and even times of burnout.  At one point, I came close to permanently leaving my chosen profession.  The culture of medicine is not geared towards allowing health care providers to de-stress, acquire emotional support, or discuss in an encouraging environment various conflictive work scenarios with their colleagues. The end result of this culture of medicine leads providers to either leave their chosen profession, have professional burnout, deal with work conflict and/or become emotionally broken (i.e. having a lack of integrity, honesty, emotional connectedness with others, etc.)

An example of medicine’s culture which needs to be changed and causes conflict is one of its many unwritten rules of professional conduct.  It states that the hospital attending is the only one who is supposed to go in and tell a patient their medical diagnosis and treatment.  Anyone else on the medical team is just supposed to pretend as though they don’t know anything until after the attending has discussed the diagnosis with the patient.  Usually this works out, but it can also lead to a breakdown in patient’s trusting their providers and/or asking team members to lie to patients until the attending has this discussion.  This can lead to dishonesty and a lack of integrity on the part of the providers…..

Related articles

• The culture of medicine needs to change (kevinmd.com)
• Short waits, long consults keep most patients very happy with their physicians (Eureka news alert)
• Intuition saved this patient from a potentially fatal diagnosis (kevinmd.com)
• 6 reasons why doctors won’t call patients (with possible solutions) (jflahiff.wordpress.com)
• Patients have a part to play in their own medical care (kevinmd.com)