Why Your Doctor Friend Is Just The Way He Is

Different people have different notions of medical doctors. Many of these notions are pleasant while others unpleasant. Unfortunately, recent events have shown that there's an increasing tilt of perception of doctors' attitude toward the negative end of the spectrum and many of these are based on lack of understanding, to put it mildly. My business today is to take a critical look at some of these conceptions or misconception and explain why they may be perceived so, with emphasis on how doctors are viewed outside the hospital environs. Join me let's take this ride together!

1. Doctors are snubs and don't care about friends and family: It's easy to feel doctors are snubs and uncaring outside the hospital. After-all, they often don't pick
your calls, they hardly attend your birthday parties or other social events and they rarely pay you a visit: sometimes even after you pay them repeated visits, they don't return them. But come to think of it, would you love to have your doctor pick calls when you are pouring out your health complains to him in his clinic? Will you be glad that your surgeon abandoned you on the operating table to pick a call in the middle of a surgery? Will you be excited if you were rushed to a hospital with a life-threatening emergency and the doctor on call was nowhere to be found because he went to attend his friend's birthday party? Will you be glad that you went to see a doctor and he didn't know how to help you out of your health challenges because he spends little time with his books and much time on social interactions with family and friends?
The truth is: your doctor friend often misses your calls not because he wants to snub you, but most likely because you call him when he's busy consulting or maybe even operating on somebody. He doesn't visit you often because he is frequently on call and his absence might be a death sentence for a patient. Furthermore, the little time he has for himself has to be put into his studies because medicine is very dynamic and vast! For him to remain relevant to his patients, he needs to continuously update his knowledge, leaving him little time for socials. And believe me, if you ever happen to be on the receiving side (as his patient), you'll be glad he sacrifices socials for your sake.

2. Doctors are stingy: I hear you echo "aha!" to this one. LOL. Please don't expect your doctor friend to be as free-handed as the politician down the street. He is not as wealthy as you think he is, the expectations on him are enormous and he has to sweat for every penny he earns, unlike the politician that has learnt that his pen is more powerful than the robber's gun (you get?). So the doctor has learnt to value every penny he has & uses it judiciously.

3. Doctors are proud: Doctors are generally humble. However they may easily be misjudged as proud people because many have a good sense of self-worth and are unsurprisingly enlightened. Consequently, you may find it difficult to manipulate them and they don't take an attempt to take them for a ride lightly. However, be sincere in your dealings with them and you'll find them to be th nicest and most humble people on earth.

4. They are boring: I agree with you on this! Most, but not all, doctors are boring. I don't blame them though. What would you expect from someone who has to spend almost twenty six hours a day on his studies? To make matters worse, his teachers in the university always made him feel like a truant each time he indulged in non-academic extra-curricular activities. In the end, he has little experience about life's issues outside medicine because a large chunk of his life revolves around medicine. So the next time you see a doctor you find boring, note that it's a price he paid to be good at what he does.

5. They are autocratic: To some extent, I agree with you on this. This trait can be traced to the nature of a doctor's training. Medicine is like the military. There is a great respect for hierarchy, especially in this part of the world where the words of ''medical elders'' are akin to the voice of God. A doctor is trained in an environment where he's expected to obey the instructions of his seniors to the letter and he's not expected to brazenly express an opposition to the views of his superiors. Consequently, he sees complete devotion to his superior's bidding as the norm and expects same from those he leads.
Furthermore, leadership in the hospital environment entails you take full responsibility for the consequences of your decisions and some of these decisions are a matter of life and death for patients. So, being a leader here demands that you ensure your instructions are heeded to the letter in order to safeguard the lives of your patients. Democracy counts for little in such a setting. It thus becomes unsurprising when someone who spends most of his time in such a regimental setting demands absolute obedience from his subordinates elsewhere albeit it being inappropriate. So the next time you feel your doctor friend is uncaring, stingy, proud or autocratic, know that you may be wrong or you may even be worse if you were in his shoes.
What other notions do you have about medical doctors? Please tell us about them in our comments section.
Stay healthy!