Doctors and Patients

This was my response to one post in a discussion forum.

Can you pls give your response to this?
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A DATABASE of patients' symptoms is welcome; such databases exist, in various text books, and in the internet. To be accepted by qualified doctors, they should be prepared by recognized experts after adequate research. Modern medicine has evolved over the centuries, that symptoms alone can't bring out any conclusions. One has to look for various features (examination) and do the necessary investigations.

These databases may not survive the knowledge explosion we face now. It has to and will evolve, as knowledge is accrued. Sometimes a whole 'diagnosis' is replaced by new terminology and explanations. So 'symptoms' become superfluous. If a doctor of the 50s were to come back to practice, he would find himself quite out of place. The 'explanations' for many 'illnesses' have changed, new 'illnesses' have appeared and so are the investigations and treatment modalities.

We continue to acquire more knowledge after coming out of medical schools by various means. Old explanations or treatment modalities are changed, challenged, or dropped. Treatment has shifted from herbs through potions to tablets or injections given directly into blood stream.

Nobody understood 'sepsis' before we discovered bacteria. Before Leeuwenhoek invented microscope, nobody knew about micro-organisms. Now where are we? We have 'seen' the smallest (?) micro organisms called viruses and know they infect even bacteria. What I mean to say is science and technology is evolving and consequently modern medicine too is advancing.

If patients are not getting enough help, is it that doctors are not helping or their help is not reaching them? Can it be a communication failure between the doctors and patients? One must keep in mind a reality; that in some situations, no help exist. In certain situations getting back a normal life is ...

"Why must the patient do all the work?": Is it to say that enough work / research is not done by the doctor? It should be understood that the ANSWERS are evolving while, at the same time, new questions appear on the horizon.

You said > "Can you think of any other industry where you have a problem, request a professionals help, and have to pay though the exact condition still exists?"

Ans: Do you mean the pharmaceutical industry? Health-care as I understand is not an industry, though the 'industrious' survive better. True, technology has brought in various gadgets and hence there is an industry there. But imagine, where else a human being has to spend his prime years in universities burning the midnight oil, attending night calls and emergencies, facing people who, for being sick, are angry at the doctor.

There are a lot of things the doctor or specialist of now a days know more than his colleague 50 yr back, but there is a great lot he is yet to know. We have reached the moon, and are eying the Mars, but the large universe is far beyond. We know about the various organs of human body, and the cells that make it up, and the various chemicals which go into the structure of the same and how they function. But do we know enough? That is why medicine is more of an art than science, and we still don't have all the answers.


It is difficult to find a perfect doctor, and that is because doctors too are human beings.

If only we had angels to qualify as doctors ! :-)


Thomas Antony