A good Doctor

Today I had behavioural sciences and somehow, I paid very much attention to the lessons. It was very important to me. I was reminded once more that it's easy to be a doctor, it's just very difficult to be a good doctor. A good doctor is something I want to be very much. The difference in a good doctor and a doctor is that a doctor may know what to do to a patient and may do it perfectly for him, but that's all. After the technicalities are dealt with a doctor's job is done and he moves on. A good doctor cares further to find out more and thinks further to advise or help the patient further than just technical medical care.

"How would a Roti Canai man work if he had a sprained thumb?"

"How would a truck drive work if he had a fractured toe and couldn't use the accelerator?"

Usually such consequences are left overlooked by doctors because there're other patients and there is just so much to do. Even if it's not overlooked, what can the doctor do? Would the doctor go all out to help and make the person feel better? This is part of what makes a good doctor.

I was saddened to hear from the lecturer that doctors do not remember the names of patients and instead refer to them as illnesses.

"That bronchitis case over there"

Busy. A common excuse.

I admire my Mother and Father for this. They seem to know all their patients names and when we go out sometimes we meet them and they come over and talk to my Mum or Dad and my parents seem to know them like they were old friends.

"A patient is not a medical problem. He is a person with a medical problem."

It is important to know the distinguish the difference.

It seems that nowadays, the value of kindness and care is being lost to our hectic lives and to sea of distractions passing by all the time. We have to be reminded for those who know this little secret. For those who don't they need to be let in to it soon.

"Being healthy is defined by WHO as being, physically, mentally and socially healthy"

Wholistic sense is usually left out whenever we get carried away by the task at hand.

Humans are not just biological machines and there is more to life than just the pumping of the heart, the firing of the nerve impulses in the brain and the digestion of food. Every bit of that affects the human and to ignore that is to be ignoring the problem altogether. And you wonder why the patient still feels horrible even after a successful cast has been put around his fractured toe. A success you think? There's more to it than that you pompous doctors. Doctor big shot already la!? Be humble please!

Humans need tender care, no matter in what situation or what game we're playing.

The beauty of the human being is in his ability to learn and change for the better.

tfaduh.