There’s a phrase that every physician hears repeatedly from
patients, that requires a nuanced response.
Doctor, what would you do if you were me?
There are variations on this inquiry, such as ‘what would you
do if I were your father’, but they all are aiming at the same target. The patient, or often the patient’s family,
asks the doctor what advice the physician would choose if he were in the
patient’s place. For example, if the
physician were the patient would he opt for:
- Surgery
- Chemotherapy
- Experimental treatment
- Watchful waiting
- A second opinion
- A third opinion
- Alternative medicine
- Acupuncture
- Hospice
'Doctor, what would you do?
Patients erroneously believe that this form of inquiry is
the magic bullet of finding out what the physician’s truly best advice is for a
particular medical circumstance. After
all, if the doctor would recommend a treatment for his own mom, then surely
this must be the best option.
Except, it isn’t.
Here’s why.
Physicians, as members of the human species, cannot be as
objective with regard their own families or themselves as they are with their
own patients. This is why wise
physicians do not treat family members.
Indeed, every physician has heard vignettes of inferior care that was
rendered by a doctor to a close family member.
The reasons for this are beyond what I can express here, but the core of
the explanation is tainted physician judgement resulting in delayed diagnoses
and incorrect treatments. When a close
relative recently approached me to discuss recurrent stomach aches, I gave her
good advice. Make an appointment with a
doctor.
Another circumstance when physicians are known to provide
inferior care secondary to judgement lapses is when the doctor is treating a
celebrity or VIP.
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