NPR: Doctors With Disabilities Push For Culture Change In Medicine

This was an interesting and uplifting read, and not before time, I guess.

NPR: Doctors With Disabilities Push For Culture Change In Medicine

Doctors are often portrayed as pinnacles of health, superhumans responding to emergencies around the clock, performing miracles of all kinds. They're seen as the fixers, not the ones ever in need of accommodations or care.

"This profession historically has viewed themselves as able-bodied in the extreme," Iezzoni says.

Now, a growing movement of current and aspiring doctors with disabilities is starting to challenge that narrative, saying it is a disservice both to the medical profession and to patients.

 

I have long thought a significant part of our problem is that medicine favours people with stamina, especially early in the career.

So it is hard for them to get a visceral sense of what we are experiencing, a profound loss of stamina (among other things).

 

I also think the idea of doctors as some sort of superhumans has caused a lot of silent suffering within the profession as well.

 

A friend told me the other day that physicians have the highest suicide and drug use rates. I haven't checked the accuracy of those statements.

 

This is a good test of whether the hype in the past few years over patient engagement can actually lead to something constructive, or whether it's just theater. So far there is still a huge disconnect between patients and medical professionals. It's not at all a relationship. We are still firmly in the "Clerks" mindset of "this job would be so great if it weren't for all those sentient non-textbook patients".

It's clear that the medical profession being made up entirely of highly abled people inhibits their ability to understand illness. Medicine teaches a lot about disease, but physicians are generally hopelessly clueless about the impact of illness and how abstract attributes like pain translate into real-life impact.

Seeing how physicians with ME are mistreated by their former colleagues, there is still a very long way to go from the traditional ways of treating patients like dumb meat that needs to be told how to think. I understand physicians routinely have bad experiences with actual jerk or difficult patients, but this isn't the right way to go about it.

 

Who cares about knowledge, wisdom, or skill. Just be available 24/7.

I think everyone sometimes has to deal with jerks and difficult people. Physicians need to learn to do so appropriately, just like everyone else (should).