Behind the Fridge

In class on Tuesday, the debate arose (for a short time) on how doctors should act.  Should they be impersonal or should they truly care for the patient?  Is there a difference?  Is one type of doctor better than the other?  Our class had people debating or rather, arguing, both sides.  Being a fanatical House fan, I thought that House, an extremely impersonal doctor, would make the better M.D.  I still hold that House is better than some extremely personal, gushy I-wanna-learn-all-about-you doctor, but after thinking some my view of the sides in the debate has changed.  

In Daniel Pink’s book, “A Whole New Mind,” Pink advocates a reform in the medical field.  He claims that doctor’s should equip themselves with empathy in diagnosing and treating patients.  In the debate, Pink supporters took one side, while fans of Dr. Gregory House took the other.  After re-reading Pink’s passage on health care I began to realize that his message and House’s technique may not be so dissimilar as I thought. 

Pink stated that the medical field itself is too “standardized.”  In other words, it’s too often “reduced to a set of repeatable formulas for diagnosing and treating various ailments(pg. 168).”  Anyone watching House knows that he is anything but standardized.  From breaking in to people’s houses, to temporarily killing a patient, to telling someone to drink his patient’s urine, House does everything possible to save his patients.  He claims to only want answers to peoples odd sicknesses, but is that really the whole truth? 

Pink writes that doctor’s should have empathy for their patients and fight for their patient’s survival.  In one episode, House allowed (and aided) a father to commit suicide so that the man’s son could have the man’s heart and thus live.  He already knew what was wrong, why did he still save the son?  Pink also wants doctors to find out about people, to hear their stories.  In Games (another episode), House takes on a drug-addicted rocker with all the symptoms of drug addiction because House doesn’t think it is drugs.  Most doctors would do the “standardized” thing and write the guy up as what he seems to be, nothing more.  It turns out the man has measles.  Not only does House reach this diagnosis, but also finds out more about the man, like his early folk music, which gives insight into his former character.  Pink also seems to want doctors to notice their patients, not the patient’s charts.  In “It’s a wonderful lie” House sees a patient only once before, but comments that she’s wearing a new shade of lip stick (which led to a diagnosis).  How many doctors notice the shade of their patient’s lip stick?

 Although House takes on a completely different persona from what anyone reading Daniel Pink’s book might imagine, there really isn’t much of a difference between House’s practice and Pink’s ideal doctor.  And so, the answer to the question if doctors should be personal or impersonal is solved.  Doctors should care.  They should notice their patients, whether the patient’s lip stick color, or attitude.  They should want to save their patients and do everything in their power to accomplish that.  The perfect doctor is one who is personal in such a way that he notices his patients without hindering his judgement.  The perfect example being Dr. Gregory House.