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The effect of mental illnesses on a society
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In her personal essay, Dr. Grant writes that she learned that most cases involving her patients should not be only handled from a doctor’s point of view but also from personal experience that can help her relate to each patient regardless of their background; Dr. Grant was taught this lesson when she came face to face with a unique patient. Throughout her essay, Dr. Grant writes about how she came to contact with a patient she had nicknamed Mr. G. According to Dr. Grant, “Mr. G is the personification of the irate, belligerent patient that you always dread dealing with because he is usually implacable” (181). It is evident that Dr. Grant lets her position as a doctor greatly impact her judgement placed on her patients, this is supported as she nicknamed the current patient Mr.G . To deal with Mr. G, Dr. Grant resorts to using all the skills she …show more content…
learned in medical school. As a doctor in training, Dr. Grant writes that she has dealt with many types of patients, Dr. Grant herself writes, “The aggressive patient, the sexual patient, the highly educated patient were a few simulated patient scenarios from my training that came to mind” (181). Dr. Grant writes that she recalls these exercises in order to show the readers that she is experienced in unique cases like Mr. G; she tries to insinuate that she thinks of herself as a professional. As Dr. Grant changed her method of approach she begins to realize that Mr. G is just a misunderstood man who is scared, and feels confined which in turn makes his aggressive behavior fill in the void. After Dr.
Grant successfully managed to treat Mr. G she comes to the realization that a doctor should not judge a patient no matter how they may act, as each patient may have a reason for acting the way they do. Dr. Grant has managed to learn how to combine her own personal experience with her doctoral skills she had learned in medical schools. Dr Grant believes. “ …[A]fter twenty-eight years of schooling, my education continues, both inside and outside the classroom” ( 183). Mr. G was the key figure in changing Dr. Grants judgement. If Mr. G had not shed light onto why he was in the hospital and how he felt stripped of his freedom to Dr. Grant she probably would have just branded him as crazy, she probably would have done the same to similar patients. As Dr. Grant states, “ … I was proud of myself for having accomplished my task… I was proud of myself because I had decided not to prejudge Mr. G” (182). Mr. G exposing his true emotions to Dr. Grant was the reason that she learned that she should not judge unique patients but instead, she should try to communicate with them and better understand so she can better help
them.
I often ask myself, “Can I handle it?” I learned from other doctors that in order to provide the best care, a physician must be able to detach himself or herself from the patient; they say it would be better for both the doctor and the patient. But, with that kind of thinking, the doctor is not fully giving himself to the patient. So, is it right to not fully give oneself to care for the patient? Learning from Patrick Dismuke and those who loved him, it seemed that the hospital was able to care for him best by loving him. Nurse Kay, Patrick’s favorite nurse, not only answered his late night calls, but enjoyed talking with him. This always calmed Patrick down before and/or after surgery. Dr. Aceves was always optimistic and hopeful for the future of Patrick’s health, never giving up on him by pushing for surgery. He did this because he knew Patrick all 16 years and was emotionally attached to the boy, even though Patrick did not feel the same way. Thus, though I can understand that a physician must put a wall between himself or herself and the patient, there should still be a strong connection in which they would do anything for the patient’s comfort and
The medical values learned in chapter 11 are, emotional detachment, professional socialization, clinical experience, mastering uncertainty, mechanistic model, intervention, and emphasis on acute and rare illnesses. The three that I mainly care about are, emotional detachment, mastering uncertainty, and clinical experience. Emotional detachment is a very important medical value because this can strongly affect not only the patient but the doctor as well. The doctor is supposed to sustain emotional detachment from patients. (Weitz 276). A doctor should try and keep their distance because their emotion can strongly affect the patient. How a doctor reacts or approaches a situation will show how they are with emotional detachment. Mastering
For anyone who has ever worked in healthcare, or simply for someone who has watched a popular hit television show such as Grey’s Anatomy, General Hospital, House or ER know that there can be times when a doctor or health care provider is placed in extremely difficult situations. Often times, those situations are something that we watch from the sidelines and hope for the best in the patient’s interest. However, what happens when you place yourself inside the doctors, nurses, or any other of the medical provider’s shoes? What if you were placed in charge of a patient who had an ethically challenging situation? What you would you do then? That is precisely what Lisa Belkin accomplishes in her book “First Do No Harm”. Belkin takes the reader on
While the majority of the book critiques the healthcare system, Chapter 13 focuses more on key actions and personality traits that help Dr. Stone relate to patients. Although this noteworthy, compassionate physician attempts to develop an understanding of his patients’ values and goals, he still fails Mrs. Jackson by trying to retain cultural competency by tiptoeing around end-of-life decisions. Conversations about feeding tube placement and DNR orders could have minimized Mrs. Jackson’s unnecessary
After the Civil War ended, many blacks and whites, especially in the South, continued living as if nothing had changed with regards to the oppression and poor treatment of African Americans. Narrator Grant Wiggins, of Ernest J. Gaines' A Lesson Before Dying, possesses a similar attitude toward race relations. Through his experiences with a young man wrongly accused of murder, Grant transforms from a pessimistic, hopeless, and insensitive man into a more selfless and compassionate human being who can see the possibility of change in relations between whites and blacks.
Jamison describes another medical figure in her life that she referred to as Dr. M. Dr. M was Jamison’s primary cardiologist, a figure who is involved in some of the most intimate details of Jamison’s life. However, Jamison describes Dr. M by saying she, “…wasn’t personal at all” (14). Dr. M would actually record personal information about Jamison on a tape recorder, however, Jamison would hear Dr. M referring to her as “patient” instead of by her name. This example demonstrates that Dr. M was indeed putting in the minimal effort needed to keep her clients, however, no additional effort was put into the process of learning about her patients. Jamison says that, “…the methods of her mechanics [were] palpable between us…” (18). Dr. M would not even put any effort into disguising her lack of interest of getting to know Jamison. This atmosphere of apathy that is exuded by Dr. M naturally causes Jamison to retract from Dr. M, which creates an environment that is not good for cultivating
Waitzkin, Howard. At the Front Lines of Medicine How the Health Care System Alienates Doctors and Mistreats Patients--and What We Can Do About It. New York: Rowman & Littlefield,, 2001. Print.
James A. Garfield was an outstanding man of many endeavors who went from driving boats down the canal to become a general of the union army to the twentieth president of the United States of America (The American Heritage Book of the Presidents and Famous Americans). James A. Garfield was against slavery and had great plans for reconstruction, but sadly they were cut short. His term only lasted in the first year, as Garfield was shot by an office seeker and died many months later (The American Heritage Book of the Presidents and Famous Americans).
It is quite obvious that morals, ethics and common courtesy are not enough to encourage the respect of patients in the educational atmosphere, as is seen in the story. I believe it is the responsibility of the medical school to encourage their teachers to demonstrate ways to connect with patients rather than just teaching the anatomy of health care. Teachers are supposed to be role models for students and if they are not taught to treat patients with respect, the only way they can learn that kind of skill is the hard way; through the loss of patients because of their feelings of irrelevancy at the doctor’s office, or through the complaints of people who are unsatisfied with their quality of health care.
He believed that the patient was, above all, the most important aspect involved in the healing process. With the rise in the number of patients under a physician’s care and the stringent rules by which each doctor must abide, many doctor’s are finding that they are unable to devote ample time to become acquainted with their patients (spiralnotebook, pg 1). Furthermore, as newly acquired information regarding illnesses becomes available on the internet, patients are seeking the advice of multiple physicians (Changing, pg 3). These differences between patients and their physicians, as well as numerous others, have caused rifts in the patient-doctor relationship. Half a century ago, a doctor’s patients relied solely on their doctor for information and advice regarding how to treat a specific disease.
As Komesaroff warns, the consequences of such neglect can be substantial - for both patient and practitioner. When considering the dynamic nature of clinical interaction, the outcome of which is the sum of “a continuum of decisions of almost infinitesimal magnitude” (Komesaroff, 2008), the impact of derogatory medical slang becomes all the more apparent. Carrying this reflection into the future, all I can hope is that when I myself am seeking distance from a trying situation, I am not too often tempted into disparaging patients or
As the story begins, the unnamed doctor is introduced as one who appears to be strictly professional. “Aas often, in such cases, they weren’t telling me more than they had to, it was up to me to tell them; that’s why they were spending three dollars on me.” (par. 3) The doctor leaves the first impression that he is one that keeps his attention about the job and nothing out of the ordinary besides stating his impressions on the mother, father and the patient, Mathilda. Though he does manage to note that Mathilda has a fever. The doctor takes what he considers a “trial shot” and “point of departure” by inquiring what he suspects is a sore throat (par. 6). This point in the story, nothing remains out of the ordinary or questionable about the doctor’s methods, until the story further develops.
An altruistic predisposition is one of the core faculties that inform ethical medical practice. Physicians are held in positions of trust, and are viewed as being socially and ethically contracted to act selflessly in service to persons under their care. Altruism in medicine therefore represents an ideal that is necessary in preserving the fabric of trust between physicians and their patients, as well as their perception of physicians as healers who place their health before any individual self-interest. This social contract is essential to the effective functioning of medicine. An erosion of this trust would represent a degradation of physicians’ ability to act as effective intermediaries between medical science and health. The origin of my
To this day, I can hear Dr. LeVann saying, dismissively, “These patients are nothing more than morons, imbeciles, and idiots.” I should remember it, I heard it several times a week for months. It was like a litany, drummed into all his staff. Although my university training backed up his theories, I quickly learned differently. I felt that many patients were unjustly condemned to live in a world that treated them with obvious disgust and disdain simply because they couldn’t communicate. I tried to speak up, Tedda, to no avail. I left after only nine months. You remained trapped, each regimented day slowly bleeding into the other, for another five years.
Malik displayed his humility in a number of ways. First of all, he was not afraid to admit his limitations. He did not try to heal every patient on his service but instead acknowledged “most of the patients would be better off outside of Misery and that we would discharge as many as possible…. The ones who needed to stay, he’d go to bat for” (page 32). Mr. K was an example of the “harm done by shrinks trying to fix people” (page 36) because many shrinks failed to recognize the difference between something that is “organic-medically treatable-as opposed to mental”, adding, “You don’t treat brain tumors with psychotherapy.” (page 36). He also “had a healthy respect for how crazy, and unreachable, some people were” (page 158) and for those people he suggested, “if you cant help ‘em, at least don’t hurt ‘em” (page 158). Thus he realized in some cases his own abilities and the wonders of modern medicine were not enough.