The New York Times article addressed this concept by stating “That it is seldom the reality, however. Deception in the doctor-patient relationship is more common than we’d like to believe. Deception is a charged word. It encapsulates precisely what we dread most in a doctor-patient relationship, and yet it is there in medicine, and it often runs both ways.”
Then a vignette:
“Despite thinking about these issues for much of my career, I am not immune to this sort of masquerade. Several years ago I took care of a woman with a severely leaky heart valve that was constantly putting her into acute heart failure. She was one of my most beloved patients who, at 88, and despite the ravages of her disease, always wore a powdered face, thick lipstick and salon-done blondish hair sitting on bony, wasted temples. She called me several times a week to update me on her condition — or sometimes just to chat. So it came as a shock when I learned one afternoon that she was in the intensive care unit. She had been brought in several days earlier by ambulance to the emergency room, intubated with a breathing tube because of respiratory arrest and admitted to the I.C.U. with a diagnosis of worsening multi-organ failure.”
Click here to read the rest of this New York Times story “The Lies That Doctors and Patients Tell” by Sandeep Jauhar.
****
Doctor, Did You Wash Your Hands? ™ provides information to consumers on understanding, managing and navigating health care options.
Jonathan M. Metsch, Dr.P.H., is Clinical Professor, Preventive Medicine, Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai; and Adjunct Professor, Baruch College ( C.U.N.Y.), Rutgers School of Public Health, and Rutgers School of Public Affairs and Administration.
This blog shares general information about understanding and navigating the health care system. For specific medical advice about your own problems, issues and options talk to your personal physician.