Doctors take pride in mastering the scientific minutiae of medicine . On the top of the medical hierarchy are the super specialists - the ones who have a lot of technical expertise in a very narrow slice of medicine. They're usually looked up to by other doctors because they're the doctor's doctors. They know practically everything there is to know about their personal area of interest, and because they attract a lot of referrals, their depth of knowledge in their domain is enormous.
However, all this super specialization comes with a price. Because they are so focused on the little segment of medicine which is of special interest to them, they sometimes fail to see the big picture. This is something which makes a lot of their patients extremely unhappy because they feel that these specialists have lost the human touch.
Doctors need to remember that while it's great to specialize - to be an interventional cardiologist or a pediatric pulmonologist, they all need to be patientologists as well. They all need to specialize in learning how to take care of their patient's emotional needs.
Unfortunately, this key skill is often lacking. It's not as it doctors are not empathetic, it's just that this valuable trait is not emphasized during their training. In fact, residency can be very dehumanising, because the poor junior doctor is often made to work under conditions where he feels he is being treated like an animal. He is often sleep deprived, hungry, stressed, and subject to bullying by his seniors. It's high time we brought humanity back into the medical profession, and the first step in this direction is to handle young doctors more kindly, so that in turn, they also learn to treat their patients with tender loving care!
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