Michael P. Jones, MD
December 28, 2015
Every now
and then, more often when on call, I experience what I think it was like to be
a physician when I was a boy.
I remember
the era of the house call. I remember the physician as a part of the community.
You saw him around town, school, and at church. You knew his wife and went to
school with his kids. I remember that. And I remember the physician being
summoned to the home as we’ve always done. It’s our role to be there when
needed. And often, physicians have not known all they needed to know about
disease. And often, we haven’t had great cures.
But we
could always listen and counsel and console. And in that way we cared, and
sometimes we healed. But we offered something beyond pills. We offered
help with life and sometimes death, too. We were there for the person, and we
were there for their families. And we did our best and tried and sometimes made
mistakes. But people were OK with less than perfect because they knew we
cared and we were trying and doing our best. And sometimes it wasn’t good
enough, and sometimes it harmed and even killed people.
But they
knew life was imperfect and that we were only human and that we were truly
trying. And sometimes they consoled us when things didn’t go well because they
knew how badly we wanted to help and how sad we were that things didn’t work
out and how gutted and nauseous we were when we harmed someone.
And now I
sit at the nurses station waving to administrators walking down the hallway and
I document what I did using some click-box program that exists primarily as a
billing and inventory receipt. It contains nothing that speaks to what we
really do. We look at documents that are all cut-and-paste, largely
fictitious, and made fat with needless information so more money can be made:
Look how hard we worked!
And I see
that this is health care today. All the marrow is sucked from the bone. There
is no life in it. And we pay ridiculous amounts of money to people who are
businessmen and could not possibly care less about your health. And our
outcomes are not good compared to the rest of the world.
I sit in my
office and look at a copy of Sir Luke Fildes’ painting, “The Doctor.” The
19th-century physician staring at that dying child knew almost nothing compared
to what we know today. And, yes, there have been many amazing medical and
technical advances that have saved countless lives. But our profession
was built upon that man at the child’s bedside. And we’ve killed him.
Michael
P. Jones is a gastroenterologist.
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