Patients don’t want to be just heard; they want to be understood. Sir William Osler, that oft-quoted great Canadian-British Physician, once said,

“It is much more important to know what sort of patient has a disease than what sort of disease a patient has.”

Another Oslerism goes,

“The good physician treats the disease; the great physician treats the patient who has the disease.”

At this point, may the reader allow this writer to confess? It was Osler who nudged me toward this literary craft. He said,

“The young doctor should look about early for an avocation, a pastime, that will take him away from patients, pills, and potions…”

Here, you can observe that my affinity for alliteration is borrowed. He also said,

“While medicine is to be your vocation, or calling, see to it that you have also an avocation – some intellectual pastime which may serve to keep you in touch with the world of art, of science, or of letters.”

This is precisely why I have always been baffled by medical councils in some domiciles who frown upon doctors pursuing the arts and publishing their works. If one of the doyens of modern Medicine encouraged us to engage the arts, who are you to punish me for doing so? Overindulgent hypocrites!

That is also what makes a doctor horrible: ARROGANCE. This is what most medical students and doctors don’t get. Knowing copious amounts of medical knowledge and acing academic examinations only make you competent.  It does not make you good. A good doctor is not only knowledgeable. She/he is also humble, empathetic, and open-minded.

That is what I meant when I said, in my journey as a patient, I met a lot of terrible doctors. They either overestimated their intelligence or exhibited awful bedside manners. Sometimes (these coincidentally being the most arrogant) were both!

Being a doctor is NOT an achievement. It is a responsibility! It appears medical schools are not doing enough. They continue producing arrogant pricks who are a threat to patients’ mental health. There are some doctors who, after the patient goes in with a physical ailment, come out with an added mental illness. The doctor fuels his/her narcissism while the patient acquires anxiety or depression.

I will not even begin to talk about the money-hungry doctors. Those deserve to be thrown in jail!

What, then, needs to be done?

It starts with student admission to medical school. The selection criteria should be refined. A series of interviews and examinations should be mandatory globally. Intelligence alone is not enough. There’s a pandemic of horrible doctors that requires urgent attention. Doctors should be humble! Is that so hard to understand?