DEAR DOCTOR: THE PATIENT IS HUMAN

I care about my patients. They pay my bills. They keep me in business. They are my employers! Most importantly, the diversity of their disease conditions is vital to the survival of my knowledge base as a practitioner. The more patients I see the better off I am as a practitioner in all ramifications.

However, over the years I have grown somewhat desensitized to my patients. I have unconsciously developed this numbness to my patients’ feelings. How this came about I cannot tell. Perhaps a combination of internal factors (uncertainties in health care, increased workload and limited time etc) and external factors (socioeconomic, environmental, psychosocial etc) are to blame. This conditioning has robbed me of compassion, an essential ingredient in patient care. Those most affected by this ‘unconscious conditioning’ unashamedly are the poor.

The doctor-patient relationship has always been one wroth with friction the years over. While most countries of the world especially developed ones have made giant strides to improve this, the situation is different in underdeveloped countries like Nigeria. Naturally, an average patient has absolute faith in his/her doctor. He or she sees the doctor as a ‘god’. The doctor has the power to take, sustain or ‘give’ life. . As a result of this a deteriorating doctor-patient relationship is a recipe for increased morbidity and mortality.

In a country in-which the doctor-patient ratio stands well over 1:8,000, a far cry from the WHO recommended 1:100; loosing touch of my patient’s humanity is too grave an offense to commit. The consequences can never be overemphasized. I must therefore strive to uphold the terms of the oath I took at induction into the medical profession. Compassionate care is at the heart of this oath. The patient is as human as I.
We are all emotional beings. Taking away my humanity overtly or subtly is a violation of my fundamental human rights. The act of reducing a patient to a ‘disease entity’ is bad practice and must be frowned at. The patient, irrespective of his/her prognosis must be seen and managed as a human being.

It is only by reaching out firstly to the emotional part of a patient can a doctor completely manage same of whatever illness. It has been scientifically proven that almost all diseases have an emotional perspective or origin. Changing the emotional conditions/states may completely lead to or greatly improve recovery. #ThePatientisHumanCampaign.

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