9 qualities of a doctor

Illness is an unwanted acquaintance that knocks during the oddest of hours. It might fall unbeknownst to you, leaving you with little opportunity to think and react sensibly. Behavioral Sciences have established that a person is prone to think irrationally under stressful situations; more the stress, more the deviance from obvious logics. You must practice healthy habits; you must make friends with peaceful, fun loving people; you must not carry mental stress for extended hours; you must not take life in its face value; you must be judicious in selecting your doctor.

1. Your doctor must be experienced enough to be able to track down rarer clinical cases.
2. Your doctor must be an easy to talk to person. Snobbishness is a strict no no.
3. Your doctor’s sense of humor must be intact and flowing. Too much seriousness, in itself, is a disease.
4. Your doctor must not give you a quizzical look when you ask something that medical fraternity considers too obvious a piece of knowledge.
5. Your doctor must respect you, and your family. If you think that your inputs are not been treated properly by your doctor, may be its time to rethink about your choice.
6. Your doctor must never develop cold feet when you want him to discuss your case with one of his superiors/peers.
7. Your doctor must not be too self-worshipping; accepting shortcomings or ignorance would leverage one’s stature in the long run.
8. Your doctor must be radiating with confidence; a meek opinion is not always considered to be the unbiased one.
9. Your doctor must not try to use overtly complex medical jargons while communicating with you; unless of course you, yourself, belong to medical fraternity. 

We are doctors; but we are humans too.

A lot of times, I sit together with fellow doctors and we discuss the changing patterns in patients’ behavior. At times we feel good in finding that we deal with a whole new lot of educated people who know the importance of a medical checkup or a medical treatment; on the other hand we get flummoxed by a certain lot of patients that fail to take us in our professional spirit and keeps on failing us. Many a times, patients think that by paying up the consultation fee or treatment fee, they must be deemed healthy, come what may. We work hard as doctors but we can’t really achieve the unattainable results just because our patients press for them.

There are certain situations that make us, the doctors, feel bad. It always helps if a patient gets to know the limitations of a doctor also; we are also bound by certain rules, and the most rigid rules are those posed by the course of diseases. I am placing few stances when we, the doctors, feel belittle and disheartened.

Patient pays up for the consultation fee and hopes to get every seed of the miraculous recovery presented to him/her right there, on the spot. What we advice is on the merit of your health and indwelling disease process; you must show trust on our professional caliber. Its not that every disease can be treated on out-patient basis; for some ailments you would be required to get admitted and observed closely.

Patient asks for the rationale of the investigations carried out on an admitted patient, and he does that with a vengeance. It is sad that due to incomplete, and often faulty information, patient thinks that we are tending to investigate him more than what is required. For the patient it might be just be a prevailing bout of fever, but for us, the doctors, the rationale possibilities run much higher. We tell the patients that abdominal ultrasound is not only required when one is having abdominal pain; it can have other indications as well. Sometimes patients listen to it and better senses prevail in them; sometimes they outright label you as the money-seeking doctor. I am sure there are ample of instances happening daily in the professional lives of a lot of my colleagues.

Patient asks for a guarantee of the treatment process rendered. This is always dismaying, and often signals the shifting mind sets of a large population. We give the reference of medical literature; we take pain in providing detailed interpretation of the disease course and disease process. Sometimes it works and sometimes patient thinks that we, the doctors, have knowingly kept a gap in the treatment process so that we get to treat him again when he arrives with similar problem. For a doctor, it is a known fact that some ailments have high recurrence rate; for a patient everything must come with a guarantee. How can we, possibly, guarantee that typhoid won’t occur again? How can we guarantee that those esophageal varices won’t bleed again? How can we guarantee that the hernia won’t surface again?

Patient tries to be overfriendly with you and in the process starts exceeding the thin line in between patient-doctor relationship. Yes we don’t mind behaving like friends with some of the patients that have high faith in us; but that does not give you liberty to behave abruptly. Show a little respect to the doctors; it would only strengthen the bond that you share with your doctor.

Top 5 Qualities of a Patients' Counselor.

Patient counselor is the ‘Abrecadarian Bridge’ between an ailing soul and its journey to health. A patient counselor can make much difference in the overall outcome of a patient’s odyssey in the hospital. People have different levels of subjectivity, different levels of patience and different levels of knowledge. Obviously, it is difficult to trace out 2 individuals with akin attitude. So a counselor’s task becomes as diverse as it can be; and its all a mental game, where winning is defined by the outlook and a loss can be cataclysmic.

1. Counselor must always appear as compassionate as possible. A ruckus-filled mind is more likely to respond favorably to a seraphic soul than to anyone else. So try to peep in the tunnels of patient's psyche; look out for the factors that are troubling him the most and then make him realize that you really understand him, and care for him.
2. Knowing the tit-a-bit of complex medical jargons also helps a great deal. The patient must not be rendered a piece of advice that is in contradiction to the prevailing medical concepts. It happens many a time that the patient turns to the counselor to have greater knowledge of disease and its treatment method. It happens mainly because either the patient is shy enough to ask direct questions to the treatment provider or the doctor leaves a lot of information between sentences and the patient’s queries suffer a boomerang’s trajectory.
3. To maintain the patient-doctor axis in equilibrium is one of the foremost responsibilities of an adept patient counselor. Once this axis is in symmetry, the work happens with the best pace. Learn to efficiently wipe out the fluff that would be of no use to the patient and the ultimate treatment process.
4. Counselor must be very patient. Troubled patients tend to loose their cool, and also tend to develop aberrational thought-process. In such a spree, the counselor can be at the receiving end of heat words. Such situations are not very uncommon and must be handled with the maturity of a sage and the wisdom of a geek. Remember, the kind acts never fizzle out; the repercussions would be there for you to feel and revel in the glory of inner solace.
5. It helps to keep your self in the patient’s state of mind at times. You can not just think out quickly of the best mode of response, but you can also identify the most potential stumbles that are troubling the patient. Learning has to be constant to keep evolving the ways that help the patients multi-dimensionally.

When you counsel a patient, put your world in the process. You are entrusted to calm down aplenty agitated nerves and you must practice the most valuable principles, the principles of hope, help and trust. Your role is important. You can put your best foot forward to help your bit in preserving the sacrosanct nature of medical profession by filtering out the granules of uncertainty and doubt from the patients’ minds. You can abridge the negativity right there by early identification and disseminate seeds of hope, knowledge and compassion to ensure that the miracle-working force of faith starts setting in. It is every doctor’s dream to get a patient counselor with angelic demeanor and sanguine outlook.