Thursday, February 03, 2005

What doctors can learn from quacks

Mid-Day, Bombay's leading afternoon paper has just published a list of 250 quacks in Bombay. This list was compiled by the Bombay Municipal Corporation, which is flexing its muscle to show the lengths it is willing to go to in order to protect its citizen's health. This is just the tip of the iceberg, of course - there must be at least 25000 quacks in Bombay !
However, the point I want to emphasise is that quacks have a much better bedside manner than regular qualified doctors do ! Since they aren't burdened with much knowledges, their entire livelihood depends on their ability to communicate with their patients. Regular MB,BS doctors should learn the art of patient communication and empathy from quacks !
The reason quacks do well is a little secret your doctor may not want you to know - 50% of what takes you to the doctor is because of a self-limited problem, which will get better, whether you go to the doctor or not. Often, all the doctor has to do is to hold your hand till Nature heals you - and quacks often do this much better than most regular MDs !

No comments:

Post a Comment