These Doctors Admit They Don’t Want Patients With Disabilities, NYT

When granted anonymity in focus groups, physicians let their guards down and shared opinions consistent with experiences of many people with disabilities.


https://www.nytimes.com/2022/10/19/...UEUObvdFzjdnS6F4VNUWeQu6ckOSxQ&smid=share-url

 

Go Medicine. You rock.

 

Disturbing in light of the fact that medicine should be all about helping people prevent, treat, and live well with disabilities.

 

Why become doctor if you think like this?

Patients cluttering up clinics and being a pest with their disabilities.... who knew that was a thing doctors would actually whine about?

Sad and offensive.

Must cause some hefty cognitive dissonance.

 

I was actually considering working on a questionnaire for doctors around Long Covid and ME/CFS after what I see daily on the medicine sub I figured reaching as many medical staff as possible to find the anonymous views to determine if its all just a toxic pit on reddit or what doctors really think when their name isn't attached to the opinion and hence they can't be sued. I guess someone in a wheelchair already got to part of the question and found what I largely think will be found that doctors really dislike ill people.

 

To make money. I discovered early on that medicine in the USA is regraded as a business venture. They proudly declared it. So becoming a doctor is not to do with liking patients.

 

Going on r/medicine was an eye-opener for me in that regard. The disdain towards patients in general, but patients with conditions that were hard to treat or untreatable specifically was shattering.

 

Don't they get visits by sales reps from pharmaceutical companies trying to get them to recommend drug x or drug y?

 

Abelism runs through society, not just the medical proffession.
When you become disabled you come up against the abelism that has been drummed into you from day one.
It takes a lot of time unpacking all of that ( and is still a work in progress for me.)

 

Yes, they get visits from drug reps, and samples they hand out to patients. Not just willy-nilly though. They prescribe the drug. Drug reps and doctors have the same protocol in Canada.

 

Looks like a number in the medical profession like to work with patients who are Young, Attractive, Verbal, Intelligent, and Successful. Yavis Syndrome. Noted many years ago in connection with the type of client psychotherapists preferred to work with.

 

So decrepit, overweight, not good at communicating, unfixable in 10 minutes - possibly not their favourite option then?

Surprising.

I thought, despite my aims otherwise, that I was a positive delight.

 

Literally have one job and it's this job.

This is why minimal standards have to be made into law and no one is above being told what's right and wrong. Medicine having had its own special track separate from the rest of society has bred a culture of complacency based on "doctor knows best". This is a terrible way of doing things.

Honor systems don't work. They never, ever do. Having so-called duties and oaths mean nothing unless rights are actually enforced, and in the massive power imbalance of healthcare, you often have to fight for every single right as they get blanket denied for arbitrary reasons.

It's clear that some people go into medicine who should not. There's nothing in the selection process of medicine that filters those people out. There's also usually nothing that can be done during their career. There are simply no protections against this for patients.

Don't place people on pedestals, they will always disappoint. Everyone needs oversight and accountability, if anything medicine proves that it's completely impossible to rely on honor systems, even in the best circumstances it just falls apart completely.

 

What about in the UK, though?

 

I was expecting even nastier stuff tbf - this is mostly 'not my job' (someone else's) stuff. I'm not sure this is as fly on the wall as suggested - it's just bare attitudes people think are logical as they explain why being bigoted is something disabled should understand is the right thing to do to them you see.

These people run their own offices in buildings by the sounds and it is as much about 'we shouldn't bear the added cost burden' and sounds like a bigger issue re: the system overall where access requirements and funding for actually being able to fulfil appointments just isn't there and so people have a choice whether to 'put themselves out'. They don't often realise the messages they cite of plain business and job cases is bigotry at all. That's why it is so insidious. Everyday messages through infrastructure etc that enforce this.

And if big hospitals aren't getting it right, or fixing it when they see how wrong it is when they get that first disabled person through I guess they are just repeating the system's message that it is a hassle you don't need and to leave it to those who are obliged. Then noone enforces that, even if someone acknowledges there is an issue for the disabled people they retort with a 'someone/somewhere else first' excuse.

I read an article I now can't find about someone who uses a wheelchair going through cancer and how things like the NHS oncology ward not having accessible things (like toilet, bed etc) and thinking wow because that cannot by any means have been the first person with a wheelchair using said ward.


Let's be honest, how much disability people experience isn't about them but about the attitude of other people and choices made by people to not have something accessible to certain people. So many conditions really nowadays have people who in a world that sorted itself out could be living a normal life not blinking much about being disabled on a day-to-day basis if the world was set up appropriately and had little adjustments to hours or whatever without blinking.

But it has been made an issue because it is everywhere - an accessible office is still in a building, street, area full of obstacles. Built by putting people in jobs who are healthy men thinking what makes their life easiest. Noone on any boards with power arguing for what makes their life easier. These aren't hassles, they are active choices to design something one way to exclude people by not caring. And yes now probably everything accessible costs more to do because it isn't the 'generic norm, bog standard' for all the equipment etc.

There is something I saw recently noting the issue is the building not the wheelchair when someone couldn't get to x meeting, yet the article naturally wrote it as 'couldn't access whatever because of their wheelchair'. Which sort of makes it how stark attitudes still are, it's just most people don't notice it in themselves because it is so ingrained and natural to them. Instead of getting embarrassed by their inaccessibility, all sorts takes its place instead.