Doctors Are Not Gods
November 04, 2011, By Steve Kissing 0 comments
Most of us guys have been conditioned to think of doctors as super-human. And why not? It takes considerable brainpower and physical endurance to get through all those years of med school. And it takes courage to face life-and-death decisions on a daily basis.
But too many of us have let a healthy respect for doctors morph into something more akin to blind allegiance and a notion of infallibility. And we the patients, not the doctors, are the ones who suffer as a result.
There’s a new report that underscores how problematic doctor worship can be, and it involves one of men’s most pressing⎯and frightening⎯health concerns: prostate cancer. For years now, many doctors have been claiming that 90% of patients recover sexually after prostate cancer treatment. They even pointed to published studies in respected medical journals.
Thing is, those studies were based on a small sample of men or a particular subset, not the general population of prostate cancer patients. The unfortunate truth is that when a large sampling of prostate cancer patients were asked two years after treatment, less than half were able to achieve erections.
The point here goes well beyond prostate cancer or any other disease or ailment. It’s about questioning our doctors and being advocates for ourselves. After all, each of us and the particular circumstance of our health are unique. As one doctor put it, “Each patient is a Rubik’s cube.” Cookie-cutter approaches to complex health issues often don’t work.
The federal Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality has launched a new campaign to spur patients to be more aggressive in questioning their doctors. To help, they even have a “question builder” to assist you with figuring out just what information you need from your doctor, whether you’re seeing him about a test, medication, surgery or for something new.
This is smart. And long overdue. Let’s all ask more questions of our doctors. We’ll all be healthier as a result.
