When doctors or their family members receive medical care, should you reveal that you’re a physician?
I normally don’t, although sometimes it can’t be helped within the smallish city I live in.
A piece in Salon talks about a case where care was unacceptable until the patient’s son revealed his medical background:
The fact that I was a doctor helped my mother in other ways during the difficult days of her hospitalization. Her surgeon showed me her CT scan to back up his judgment about the need for surgery (which required a little explanation to the radiologist, given most doctors don’t show up to see scans in a T-shirt, shorts and sandals). I saw a sea change in her internist, who suddenly felt comfortable communicating with me in our common clinical language. He knew, I suppose, that I would be able to save him time and translate his assessment into plainer English for my parents.
It’s an unfortunate reality that physicians and their families often receive better communication within the medical system.
Maybe it’s there’s an increased level of comfort talking between colleagues, not having to explain medical jargon.
Or perhaps the providing physician tends to opens up knowing that there is mutual understanding of the difficulties navigating the medical system.
Whatever the reason, and I certainly don’t think it’s a conscious effort for doctors to preferentially provide better care to their medical brethren.
Related posts:
- Perception
- Playing tough with insurers
- Why doctors skip medical interpreters, and how that damages physician-patient communication
- Can Twitter be used for doctor-patient communication?
- My take: Counter-detailing, Match Day, communication
- Why would a doctor stop seeing patients?
- Can paging the wrong doctor harm patients?
{ 1 comment }
I usually reveal the fact that I’m a nurse, and last year, when I had my gastric bypass, I honestly think I got better care, which makes me feel uncomfortable not only personally, but for the rest of the patients. I think the most important part of revealing you are a medical professional is how you treat the staff that are taking care of you–my nurses commented that I was “the best patient they’d ever had”. I treated them, and wrote a letter of thanks to them (copied to the DNS, of course) after my stay. Thanks for another good post.
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