What Doctors Feel (eBook)

MD Danielle Ofri (Autor)

eBook Download: EPUB

2013 | 1. Auflage
232 Seiten
Beacon Press (Verlag)
978-0-8070-7333-9 (ISBN)

Infos

A look at the emotional side of medicine--the shame, fear, anger, anxiety, empathy, and even love that affect patient care

Physicians are assumed to be objective, rational beings, easily able to detach as they guide patients and families through some of life's most challenging moments. But doctors' emotional responses to the life-and-death dramas of everyday practice have a profound impact on medical care. And while much has been written about the minds and methods of the medical professionals who save our lives, precious little has been said about their emotions. In What Doctors Feel, Dr. Danielle Ofri has taken on the task of dissecting the hidden emotional responses of doctors, and how these directly influence patients.

How do the stresses of medical life--from paperwork to grueling hours to lawsuits to facing death--affect the medical care that doctors can offer their patients? Digging deep into the lives of doctors, Ofri examines the daunting range of emotions--shame, anger, empathy, frustration, hope, pride, occasionally despair, and sometimes even love--that permeate the contemporary doctor-patient connection. Drawing on scientific studies, including some surprising research, Dr. Danielle Ofri offers up an unflinching look at the impact of emotions on health care.

With her renowned eye for dramatic detail, Dr. Ofri takes us into the swirling heart of patient care, telling stories of caregivers caught up and occasionally torn down by the whirlwind life of doctoring. She admits to the humiliation of an error that nearly killed one of her patients and her forever fear of making another. She mourns when a beloved patient is denied a heart transplant. She tells the riveting stories of an intern traumatized when she is forced to let a newborn die in her arms, and of a doctor whose daily glass of wine to handle the frustrations of the ER escalates into a destructive addiction. But doctors don't only feel fear, grief, and frustration. Ofri also reveals that doctors tell bad jokes about 'toxic sock syndrome,' cope through gallows humor, find hope in impossible situations, and surrender to ecstatic happiness when they triumph over illness. The stories here reveal the undeniable truth that emotions have a distinct effect on how doctors care for their patients. For both clinicians and patients, understanding what doctors feel can make all the difference in giving and getting the best medical care.

From the Hardcover edition.

Textauszug

Why Doctors Act That Way

The experiences of medical training and the hospital world have been extensively documented in books, television, and film. Some of this has been probing and incisive, and some has been entertaining nonsense.
Much has been written about what doctors do and how they frame their thoughts. But the emotional side of medicine--the parts that are less rational, less amenable to systematic intervention--has not been examined as thoroughly, yet it may be at least as important.
The public remains both fascinated and anxious about the medical world--a world with which everyone must eventually interact. Within this fascination is a frustration that the health-care system does not function as ideally as people would like. Despite societal pressures, legislative reforms, and legal wrangling, doctors don't always live up to these ideals. I hope to delve beneath the cerebral side of medicine to see what actually makes MDs tick.
One might reasonably say, I don't give a damn how my doctor feels as long as she gets me better. In straightforward medical cases, this line of thinking is probably valid. Doctors who are angry, nervous, jealous, burned out, terrified, or ashamed can usually still treat bronchitis or ankle sprains competently.
The problems arise when clinical situations are convoluted, unyielding, or overlaid with unexpected complications, medical errors, or psychological components. This is where factors other than clinical competency come into play.
At this juncture in our society's history, nearly every patient--at least those in the developed world--can have access to the same fund of medical knowledge that doctors work from. Anyone can search WebMD for basic information or PubMed for the latest research. Medical textbooks and journals are available online. The relevant issue-- the one that has the practical impact on the patient--is how doctors use that knowledge.
There has been a steady stream of research into how doctors think. In his insightful and practically titled book How Doctors Think, Jerome Groopman explored the various styles and strategies that doctors use to guide diagnosis and treatment, pointing out the flaws and strengths along the way. He studied the cognitive processes that doctors use and observed that emotions can strongly influence these thought patterns, sometimes in ways that gravely damage our patients. 'Most [medical] errors are mistakes in thinking,' Groopman writes. 'And part of what causes these cognitive errors is our inner feelings, feelings we do not readily admit to and often don't even recognize.'1
Research bears this out. Positive emotions tend to be associated with a more global view of a situation ('the forest') and more flexibility in problem solving. Negative emotions tend to diminish the importance of the bigger picture in favor of the smaller details ('the trees'). In cognitive psychology studies, subjects with negative emotions are more prone to anchoring bias--that is, latching on to a single detail at the expense of others. Anchoring bias is a potent source of diagnostic error, causing doctors to stick with an initial impression and avoid considering conflicting data. Subjects with positive emotions are also prone to bias, they are more likely to succumb to attribution bias. In medicine, this is the tendency to attribute a disease to who the patient is (a drug user, say) rather than what the situation is (exposure to bacteria, for example).
This is not to say that positive emotions are better or worse than negative emotions--both are part of the normal human spectrum. But if you consider the range of cognitive territory...

Produkt-Details

• Erscheint lt. Verlag: 4.6.2013
• Sprache: englisch
• Themenwelt: Literatur ► Biografien / Erfahrungsberichte
• Themenwelt: Sachbuch/Ratgeber ► Gesundheit / Leben / Psychologie
• Themenwelt: Medizin / Pharmazie ► Allgemeines / Lexika
• Themenwelt: Medizin / Pharmazie ► Medizinische Fachgebiete ► Medizinethik
• ISBN-10: 0-8070-7333-4 / 0807073334
• ISBN-13: 978-0-8070-7333-9 / 9780807073339