Doctors have been a profession widely respected by people from every level of dwellings, being put in such a high place and rank in community, saluted for their width and depth of knowledge not many men can achieve.. History have shown the great minds of the Arab worlds were indeed doctors, or
thobeeb.. For example, Avicenna (
Ibnu Sina), the great Persian physician who wrote The Book of Healing and the Canon of Medicine.. Hippocrates, on the other hand, was a great Greek physician, known today as the
Father of Medicine.. The widely known Hippocratic Oath is still a valued trust emblem that binds a doctor to humanity and ethics.. Even today, commoners (namely in Malaysian culture) still address their doctors in their community as
doctors and not by their names.. Such a noble seat to present for a man..
But with time, comes its own tribulations.. Along the way, despite the promise to serve mankind, few have stained the trust and neglected their duties, and subsequently tainted the whole family.. Indeed, raising doubts and giving reasons
WHY NOT TO TRUST DOCTORS..
A Scalpel Is Not A Knife
Harold
Shipman (1946-2004) was
a graduate from Leeds School of Medicine in 1970 and worked his way up the professional ladder until he became a general practitioner in West Yorkshire in 1974.. Nobody knew where in his path he went astray when he started killing his patients with lethal dose of
diamorphine.. An inquiry was held, he was then convicted to
killing 15 of his patients and later sentenced to 15 concurrent life sentences..
Shipman however was found hanged in his cell on the eve of his 58
th birthday.. A report in 2002 concluded that the number of
Shipman's victim may well be around 215..
Thomas Neill Cream was a debonair gentleman who graduated from medical school in
McGill University in 1876.. Unlike
Shipman, Cream's favoured method of killing was with strychnine tablets.. Ingestion of these tablets resulted his victims to convulsions and gasps for air as their throat swell.. His victims were mainly female as his selling line was that the tablets he prescribed would protect his patients from sexually transmitted disease..
Of course, there was also the infamous Jack the Ripper of England, who until today many thought that he might be a doctor, or at least someone with the knowledge and expertise of one.. These are the names we know, but how many others do we not know? There are around 9.36 million registered doctors worldwide.. Even if 0.1% of them are the bad guys, we are indeed in doom!
Enough with the examples.. The question now posed is : Do these men have the right to called
Doctors? Regardless of what your answer may be, bare in mind that they did go through the difficulty and strain during their training in medical school.. Despite their actions, they did have the capability and intelligence to achieve such standard in life to become a doctor..
Misses, Mistakes And MisdiagnosesRecent events in Ireland have put doctors in a very hot seat and indeed a tight spot on top of that.. The cancer missed-diagnoses of two patients in one of the general hospitals in the West of the country have alerted every single person in Ireland to the level of competence of every doctor.. Of course, with the row about breast cancer and the availability of information in the
internet, many women are becoming very sensitive and protective, possibly to a level of paranoia in my opinion..
AM and
EK were both diagnosed with breast cancer.. The media attention was that the cancer diagnoses for both patients were missed at the initial contact with a doctor.. The two unfortunate ladies hence were subsequently diagnosed with breast cancer at a stage where the tumour had spread widely to other organs.. Such a row has happened that the hospital attributed to this event is evidently on the verge of being decommissioned and shut down!
Several facts were possibly manipulated, either by the media or people with interests, that the
story is now a drama on the television.. Of course, the initial mammogram scans were re-examined and old patient medical record notes were stripped apart.. But, it is factually easy to point at the most minute of defects in a scan of, say, five years ago when we know today where the tumour is.. Whereas, the doctor at that time of examining the scans may not have felt the minute spot as more that an arbitrary scan
artifact.. Tearing through the patient notes to read between the lines of records, of course due to the known fact now makes every single word so significant that even a note of
fever could be extrapolated as "rise in temperature due to infection secondary to
immunosuppression caused by cancer".. At this stage, anyone can point their finger to a doctor and put the blame on him..
Even recently enough, a lady died of an aortic dissection - where the main artery in the human body tore and caused massive internal bleeding that the patient died of shock.. The x-ray was examined by a experienced respiratory physician (who spends most of his medical career looking at chest x-rays everyday) and concluded that it was no more than a
pneumonia.. Could you possibly expect a spot-on diagnosis from a more junior doctor to come with that exact diagnosis?
What about giving an antibiotic and causing an
anaphylactic reaction? This is certainly not uncommon.. Dose mistakes happen so frequently, but whether it was life-threatening or not, depends on the medicine itself and the patients..
Misses, mistakes and misdiagnoses happen.. But the nature of the world today is that of
blaming culture.. When something 'bad' happens, somebody has to take the blame.. And because a doctor's job relates so closely to
someone's life, it is so easy to point the finger to a doctor.. Very
seldomly people sue a veterinarian after their cat died, but a doctor is readily to be sued for breaking a chest bone in his possibly attempt to resuscitate a person after drowning..
It's because he's not competent, he didn't do it correctly.. I'm save and alive but the doctor is still wrong.. This is the world we live in today..
Medical Politics And Political MedicineMedicine today is not as politically neutral as we all had hoped for.. Political hands influence all decisions made in the hospital even at a very basic level.. For example, a person presents to the emergency room with a chest pain.. History and examination were
consistent with muscular pain.. Man was sent home for general practitioner follow up.. Two days later, man ended up having a heart attack..
Here's the scenario.. If the man was admitted, the admitting doctor would be stared at because of admitting a muscular chest pain patient which could easily be dealt by the
patient's own doctor in the community, hence the doctor had wasted one bed for a sick patient.. If the man was discharged, the doctor will also be stared at because was careless and missed a heart attack.. Either way, most doctors will admit the patient regardless of how 'soft' the admission was..
Political influences in Ireland are looking even grim at this stage.. Cutbacks mean that smaller county hospitals may be closed down and the service being diverted to
a bigger regional hospital.. Despite that cuts, the number of doctors are not being increased, the number of beds in the hospital are not being increased.. Hence, the same number of doctors will attend to possibly double or triple the number of potential patients.. Of course, as explained above, if anything goes 'bad', point the finger at the doctor for his incompetence..
But not many from the doctors' profession are well versed in politics that they could stand up and fight for the cause.. Most doctors become doctors with the intention to use their given ability to help and
serve the community.. At the end of the day, the trust that people put on their doctors fade because of all the wrong reasons..
Tainted TrustSuch a great profession that there are indeed so many reasons not to trust them.. Some are worthy of not to be trusted - at the expense of the global trust towards doctors are tainted by the doings of few.. Furthermore, mistakes and misses, whether big or small, become a talking point, to a level where when people talk, the trust on a doctor, the confidence towards a physician is
makedly crushed
that the profession itself may be at stake.. Of course, political agendas led by politicians - whose interests are not within the hospital or patient care directly - influence the media and swing the confidence vote in favor of not trusting the medical profession..
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I believe I have said enough for chapter one.. I have laid to you such strong reasons why not to trust a doctor.. Remember, the trust we are talking about is not of monetary value, but alas the value of life.. Have a think about my debates and await my second entry on why do you trust a doctor..
Sleep on this one.. Salam..
