When healthcare has become so profit-driven, and many doctors are under pressure to see as many patients as possible, where is the time to ask, to observe and to record?
I know of doctors who won’t spend more than 30 minutes with a patient, and of others who don’t even look at the person in front of them, instead just asking questions and entering the replies into their computers.
As a teenager, our family doctor would ask me about school, books I was reading, etc. and even at that age, I realized that he was using all that information to draw a complete picture of my ailment. Often, no medication would even be prescribed.
Do such doctors exist anymore?
(This comment appeared in the New York Times, in reply to an article by oncologist Siddhartha Mukherjee, “What Can Odd, Interesting Medical Case Studies Teach Us?“)
© Percy Aaron
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