Life isn't about how to survive the storm, but how to dance in the rain!

Sunday, August 06, 2006

Another milestone

I just listened to a program on public radio about empathy this morning.

(From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia: "Empathy is one's ability to recognize and understand the emotion of another. As the states of mind, beliefs, and desires of others are intertwined with their emotions, one with empathy for another may often be able to more effectively divine another's modes of thought and mood. Empathy is often characterized as the ability to "put oneself into another's shoes", or experiencing the outlook or emotions of another being within oneself, a sort of emotional resonance.")

From what I gathered, "empathy" is now a required course for medical students. I wonder why they figured they had to incorporate that into the curiculum????? So now my doctors (who look like my children and will soon become grandchild like (lol) if I keep getting older, are going to listen to my ailments and be empathic? They say that by being empathic, their patients have a tendency to listen and follow directions better. They make it sound like all patients are idiots and never ever follow their doctors orders. Well maybe, just maybe, they came to that conclusion because of the god like, egomanical qualities that doctors seem to possess to begin with (those that are self taught, mind you). I mean like duh~ I've been around enought doctors in the past few years due to Mom's health and family members ailments to draw the conclusion that doctors don't have time to be empathic. They give you approximately 8 minutes!!!!!! How can they afford to be all nice and smiley and make you feel all sweet and bubbly inside? They can't! And I bet they won't! (Do I sound bitter?) lol

Peace!

3 comments:

C... said...

I totally feel you. I am having empathy here.

See good doctors are hard to find and when they care they are even more scarce but those doctors often are all booked up because they take the time to spend time with their patients. I guess being a patient means having patience enough to understand that if you want to meet with your doctor and have him spend 30+ minutes with you, you will have to understand that each person ahead of you will get their 30+ minutes too.

Michael C said...

Great, now we'll have docs that will pretend to feel bad for us that we know are faking caring about our ailments. Yeah, that'll help me get better.

Maria said...

Doctors... yuck! They are not nice. They rarely if ever give good news. They have no patience and they don't really care. I can't imagine a nice one let alone one that does not think he is God. If he doesn't than it's usally his/ her nurse that thinks he/ she is! Sorry bad experiences with Doctores all around! ~M