Restoring Patient-Doctor Relationship

Frequent communication between patient/family and the doctor in laymans terms is important

- Dr H Sudarshan Ballal

It is indeed very sad to see the slow and steady decline and painful (to many of us in the field) death of a healthy patient-doctor relationship which was based on trust, confidence and respect.

Having been in the field for over four decades, I have witnessed the peak glory of the medical profession and unfortunately the nadir in the recent past as well.

There was a time when we were young, the family doctor was seen as a God, friend, philosopher and guide in addition to being just a doctor for the family. The most common answer any youngster would give about what he or she wanted to be was, without hesitation, to join MBBS and be a respected well-known doctor. The best and the brightest worked very hard for many long years to become successful doctors and alleviate the suffering of human beings.

How sad that the very same profession has been maligned and the doctor once considered as God has become the Devil. Verbal and physical threats, abuse, vandalisation of hospitals and work places is a day-to-day day affair now. The situation has become so bad that many doctors fear practicing medicine and are seeking early retirement or alternate professions. None of the youngsters or even their parents want them to get into the medical profession. As I see it, this decline has happened very rapidly in the last couple of decades.

I have pondered long and hard about the reasons for this intense mistrust between the patients and the medical professionals and more importantly, about the solutions to restore the sacred doctor- patient relationship.

In my opinion, some of the reasons for the steady decline in this very important relationship are as follows:

The huge increase in cost of treatment

There has been a dramatic change in the cost of therapy because of the ability to take care of very sick people, who in the past would not have survived at all.