MGZ

Summary

The leading thought in the paper of Robert Lipsyte is the lack of communication between the

patient and doctor or between doctor and doctor. The article was posted in February 20, 2008

with the title: “Health care disconnect”. He points out his view about this matter with the help

of three crucial questions what he ask to all the doctors in his health care team. What he

would really like to do is address the entire American doctor society about these questions.

Regardless of the number of national plans even the politicians will not be able to solve the

present health crisis unless the doctors start an open communication between each other and

with their patients. The physicians are generally not emphatic about the feelings and pain of

the patients. Even though these are very important issues the patients are wordless fearing

they would offend the doctors asking wrong questions.

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Doctor patient relations

Health care on the basic level starts with the patient and the doctor. No matter which

system you observe: the capitalist private health care or the socialized health care, the

patients’ needs should be on the top of the priority list. Being a doctor and “repairing” patients

became a great business just like the job of the mechanics. This emotionless behaviour might

suit the doctors well but it makes the patients’ life so hard. Besides the senseless encounters

with hospitals or doctor’s offices, their problem is on the rise as they ask themselves, “How

am I going to pay for that? Overscheduled, crowded “assembly line”-like facilities and the

patients are not even treated fair in their most vulnerable moments!

Most of the time illnesses require united effort from different specialists and the keystone of

this cooperation is communication between the doctors. They might not know about areas of

healing but their aim is to cure their patient, not giving them more problems by interfering

with each others treatments. I was working in the field of oncology and I had a chance to see

how much collaboration it requires to treat a cancer patient.

The author’s key questions are seemingly completely different but they all derive from

the same problem, lack of communication skills. The structure of his article is clear and

understandable. He introduces these points right at the beginning. As he asks “Will you get

past your partisanship to talk to one another, will you feel my pain and are your hands clean?”

he outlined the whole paper. Even though it seems too much at the same time it makes the

reader start thinking about these things. The tactic I like about his essay is giving the right

support background information only a right click away from the original text. That is an
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excellent way of building credibility in case of an article posted on the Internet. These links

offer not only a possibility of instant advanced knowledge but also serve as stressing of these

topics further. The additional pages are ranging from article of Center of Disease Control and

Prevention to book offering, movie and TV series homepages.

I was very pleased to see he mentioned the importance of a simple action “Washing

hands”. Most of the people do not know that over 88,000 patients die every year from an

infection they acquire after being admitted to a health care facility. A shocking 20% of these

infections could be avoided with proper hand-washing. This important fact cannot be

emphasized enough for everyone. Patients have the right to ask a health care worker in any

level whether they washed their hands beforehand. This should be considered as a courtesy

from the patient and not an insulting question. Especially because it can save lives, and we

only have one life to take care of!

We can step into the skin of the author through his ideas and experiences. The readers’

emotions can be easily enhanced by counting on their empathy and the fact they might very

well have had the same or similar experiences in their life. His target audience is not only the

patients but those doctors too who need to learn treat the patients as equal partners.

He mentions how important is for the doctor to experience serious illnesses so they can relate

to their patients. A very good source for this topic is Dr. Robert Klitzman’s book “When

Doctors Become Patients” and I think the medical schools should make this book a

compulsory curriculum for the students. Teaching the future doctor society is crucial! The

situation will not change unless a new generation of physicians is educated.

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If the politicians would really want to make a difference they should lobby for the recent and

future ill residents. They would have the tools to have an impact on the society and the

education. Life expectancy of the elderly and seriously ill inhabitants is dynamically growing

just like the burden to take care of them. Too bad, influential officials are extremely busy in

their own henhouse with their personal wealth.

This discussion depends not only on the doctor but on the patient too. In this developed,

materialistic and computerized world the patients also need to be educated how to handle the

situation to be dependent on others but still keep their dignity and self-consciousness.

Generations of future patients and doctors need training for that. Everything depends on the

present society to make a difference and achieve a positive change. Let’s live with this

opportunity!