In the June issue of the GME e-Letter, we referenced an essay in JAMA (extract)by Paul Rousseau, MD, who observed attendings, residents, and studentson hospital teaching rounds from the perspective of a caring familymember:
I have no doubt that as the medical team approached her cubicle,she was simply the 52-year old scleroderma patient in the intensivecare unit.
She was irrelevant; her disease was not. While she was receivingthe best technical care in the world, the individual that she wasseemed forgotten, her personhood tossed to the side in lieu of theintricacies of pathophysiology.
Dr. Rousseau's observations lead to a series of questions about our profession:
Has medicine become such a business that the human factor hasbeen relegated to the trash heap? Has the paucity of autonomy or even afalling income usurped the humanistic qualities of our worthyprofession? Could it be that we lack empathic and compassionate mentorsto plant humanistic seeds among young, impressionable physicians? Arewe simply selecting the wrong people for medical school? Or does therigorous training that ensues during the residency years generate anemotional egress of what attracted us to this principled and honorableprofession in the first place: to relieve the suffering of a fellowhuman being, be it physical, social, spiritual, or emotional?
In his summary, he challenges us "to return medicine to its Oslerianand Hippocratic roots, roots that care for the patient in all domains."
We asked readers of the e-Letter for their thoughts on theessay and whether modern medical care has lost its way and, perhaps,its soul. Below are the responses we received, with identifyinginformation removed. (Note: These views may not necessarily reflect those of the AMA.)
