Skip to content
  • About
  • Contact
  • Contribute
  • Book
  • Careers
  • Podcast
  • Recommended
  • Speaking
  • All
  • Physician
  • Practice
  • Policy
  • Finance
  • Conditions
  • .edu
  • Patient
  • Meds
  • Tech
  • Social
  • Video
    • All
    • Physician
    • Practice
    • Policy
    • Finance
    • Conditions
    • .edu
    • Patient
    • Meds
    • Tech
    • Social
    • Video
    • About
    • Contact
    • Contribute
    • Book
    • Careers
    • Podcast
    • Recommended
    • Speaking

We need to get over our professional ego, and focus on being well

Amy Fan, MD
Physician
October 7, 2017
Share
Tweet
Share

I am the “sick” resident this month.

Instead of seeing check-ups and doing physicals, I see walk-in patients and triage same-day appointments. When my desk phone rings, the standard greeting in clinic is, “This is Amy — sick.”

After a few days, I started joking that I am to be called the Well resident from now on. Some people laughed, and many said, “What would that mean?” Somewhere between the 50th and 100th child with fever + cough +/- diarrhea, I realized the truth in jest.

Modern medicine only knows the curing of sickness rather than the implementation of wellness because we don’t understand what wellness is.

Wellness is not simply the absence of physical disease, but a state of balance between the health of the mind, body, and spirit. For the mind, we have a few categories of disease, some formulas for counseling and a handful of poorly understood drugs to play with neurotransmitters. For the spirit … well, there’s no official party line regarding its existence yet, and please direct all inquiries to the hospital’s non-denominational pastoral staff.

It’s not our fault. Rather, it’s not medicine’s fault. We trace our ancestry to empirical science, whose pioneers were rather brutally persecuted by the spiritual leaders of their day. In those dark ages, science fought the battle for faithful observation of the truth free from bias and dogma. We owe a great deal to this battle. Without it, not only would we continue to easily die without penicillin and a tetanus shot, modernity would not exist.

Medicine inherited the scientific fervor for objectivity. Unfortunately, the practice of medicine also inherited a rejection, or maybe even a phobia, of anything that is not tangible, quantifiable and blessed by a double-blind trial.

Science and spirituality are not fundamentally contradictory. In fact, some of the greatest scientific minds in history were also intensely spiritual beings. In the words of someone who is good at explaining the universe:

Light appears as a wave if you ask it “a wavelike question,” and it appears as a particle if you ask it “a particle-like question.” This is a template for understanding how contradictory explanations of reality can simultaneously be true.

And it’s not so much true, as our cultural debates presume, that science and religion reach contradictory answers to the same particular questions of human life. Far more often, they simply ask different kinds of questions altogether, probing and illuminating in ways neither could alone.

– Albert Einstein

Why, then, is the practice of medicine so uncomfortable with and so unwilling to share its powers with anything that does not speak its peer-reviewed language? I believe it is because of the ego of medicine.

The ego is conferred by society and its expectation for medicine to be the Great Healer. It is nurtured by the pressure our discipline puts on itself to have the final answer. Even though health is the intersection of three dimensions, our “health” insurance mainly covers services to the body. We make an effort to encourage mental health practices and offer spiritual services in the hospital, but they are treated as extras — the stuffing, not the turkey. At the end of the day, we are a society of science (which is not, as medical anthropology will point out, an unbiased culture-less institution) and expect the crowning jewels of scientific knowledge to end our suffering.

But medicine is an empirical study of the physical body, and it does not have the tools to study, much less treat, the unquantifiable dimensions of personhood and life. It is akin to asking a “wave-like question” to a community that sees light only as particles. As a result of this lack of ability, the ego expands to compensate.

ADVERTISEMENT

Every time I work in the intensive care unit, there always comes a moment when I am struck by our ability to keep a body functioning. We have tools to assist or emulate the jobs of almost every vital organ. Even if this is not a permanent solution and can hardly be called living, often it gives the patient a vital window of time to recover and return to being alive again.

And then, there always comes another moment when I am struck by how helpless we (patients, families, doctors, nurses, technicians, cafeteria workers) all are at being well in our different roles.

Let’s lay down this heavy ego and be emphatic about what we don’t know. This would not diminish the marvel of modern medicine — and the intensive care unit is a thing to be marveled at. But how many times have we all had patients who were hospitalized for a suffering we cannot identify or cure with medicine? As complex as the body is, surely the mental and spiritual dimensions of deserving acknowledgment of the same complexity and same need for care. Let’s not belittle the idea of wellness by checking off the box with a few lunch-time seminars for physicians and thinking the task is done.

We are the killers of bacteria, the transplanters of organs and the army against cancer cells. But we don’t know all the dimensions of pain, and pretending we do by using big words like somatic vs. Munchausen is doing our patients a disservice in the end.

Let’s take a step back, create an open space to “ask different kinds of questions altogether,” and start with wellness in ourselves.

Amy Fan is a pediatric resident who blogs at her self-titled site, Amy Fan, MD.  She can be reached on Twitter @AskDrAmyPeds.

Image credit: Shutterstock.com

Prev

MKSAP: 58-year-old man with hepatitis C-related cirrhosis

October 7, 2017 Kevin 0
…
Next

Antidepressants and pregnancy: Let’s examine the misconceptions

October 7, 2017 Kevin 0
…

Tagged as: Critical Care, Primary Care

Post navigation

< Previous Post
MKSAP: 58-year-old man with hepatitis C-related cirrhosis
Next Post >
Antidepressants and pregnancy: Let’s examine the misconceptions

ADVERTISEMENT

ADVERTISEMENT

ADVERTISEMENT

More by Amy Fan, MD

  • Natural disasters in a time of telemedicine

    Amy Fan, MD
  • The fine line between do no harm and do nothing

    Amy Fan, MD

Related Posts

  • The biggest health care fix: a relentless focus on primary care

    Suneel Dhand, MD
  • Understanding professional liability insurance in physician employment contracts

    Elizabeth Shubov, JD
  • Why health care replaced physician care

    Michael Weiss, MD
  • 5 simple steps to amplify a physician’s professional visibility

    Marjorie Stiegler, MD
  • More physician responsibility for patient care

    Michael R. McGuire
  • Health care needs more physician CEOs

    Alexi Nazem, MD

More in Physician

  • Removing vaccine advisers could jeopardize lives

    J. Leonard Lichtenfeld, MD
  • Why would any physician believe that the practice of medicine will become less abusive for them in the future?

    Curtis G. Graham, MD
  • The hidden war on doctors: Understanding administrative violence

    Maryna Mammoliti, MD
  • How doctors can stop frivolous lawsuits before they start

    Howard Smith, MD
  • How the 10th Apple Effect is stealing your joy in medicine

    Neil Baum, MD
  • When a doctor becomes the narrator of a patient’s final chapter

    Ryan McCarthy, MD
  • Most Popular

  • Past Week

    • Why tracking cognitive load could save doctors and patients

      Hiba Fatima Hamid | Education
    • What the world must learn from the life and death of Hind Rajab

      Saba Qaiser, RN | Conditions
    • How medical culture hides burnout in plain sight

      Marco Benítez | Conditions
    • Why flashy AI tools won’t fix health care without real infrastructure

      David Carmouche, MD | Tech
    • How the 10th Apple Effect is stealing your joy in medicine

      Neil Baum, MD | Physician
    • Why Medicaid cuts should alarm every doctor

      Ilan Shapiro, MD | Policy
  • Past 6 Months

    • Why tracking cognitive load could save doctors and patients

      Hiba Fatima Hamid | Education
    • Make cognitive testing as routine as a blood pressure check

      Joshua Baker and James Jackson, PsyD | Conditions
    • The silent toll of ICE raids on U.S. patient care

      Carlin Lockwood | Policy
    • The broken health care system doesn’t have to break you

      Jessie Mahoney, MD | Physician
    • How dismantling DEI endangers the future of medical care

      Shashank Madhu and Christian Tallo | Education
    • How scales of justice saved a doctor-patient relationship

      Neil Baum, MD | Physician
  • Recent Posts

    • When the diagnosis is personal: What my mother’s Alzheimer’s taught me about healing

      Pearl Jones, MD | Conditions
    • What led me from nurse practitioner to medical school

      Sarah White, APRN | Education
    • Why local cardiac CT scans could save your life

      Benjamin Cohen, MD | Conditions
    • Reassessing the impact of CDC’s opioid guidelines on chronic pain care [PODCAST]

      The Podcast by KevinMD | Podcast
    • Key strategies for smooth EHR transitions in health care

      Sandra Johnson | Tech
    • How proposed NIH budget cuts could derail Alzheimer’s research

      Tamer Hage, Tejas Sekhar, and Swapna Vaja | Conditions

Subscribe to KevinMD and never miss a story!

Get free updates delivered free to your inbox.


Find jobs at
Careers by KevinMD.com

Search thousands of physician, PA, NP, and CRNA jobs now.

Learn more

Leave a Comment

Founded in 2004 by Kevin Pho, MD, KevinMD.com is the web’s leading platform where physicians, advanced practitioners, nurses, medical students, and patients share their insight and tell their stories.

Social

  • Like on Facebook
  • Follow on Twitter
  • Connect on Linkedin
  • Subscribe on Youtube
  • Instagram

ADVERTISEMENT

ADVERTISEMENT

ADVERTISEMENT

ADVERTISEMENT

  • Most Popular

  • Past Week

    • Why tracking cognitive load could save doctors and patients

      Hiba Fatima Hamid | Education
    • What the world must learn from the life and death of Hind Rajab

      Saba Qaiser, RN | Conditions
    • How medical culture hides burnout in plain sight

      Marco Benítez | Conditions
    • Why flashy AI tools won’t fix health care without real infrastructure

      David Carmouche, MD | Tech
    • How the 10th Apple Effect is stealing your joy in medicine

      Neil Baum, MD | Physician
    • Why Medicaid cuts should alarm every doctor

      Ilan Shapiro, MD | Policy
  • Past 6 Months

    • Why tracking cognitive load could save doctors and patients

      Hiba Fatima Hamid | Education
    • Make cognitive testing as routine as a blood pressure check

      Joshua Baker and James Jackson, PsyD | Conditions
    • The silent toll of ICE raids on U.S. patient care

      Carlin Lockwood | Policy
    • The broken health care system doesn’t have to break you

      Jessie Mahoney, MD | Physician
    • How dismantling DEI endangers the future of medical care

      Shashank Madhu and Christian Tallo | Education
    • How scales of justice saved a doctor-patient relationship

      Neil Baum, MD | Physician
  • Recent Posts

    • When the diagnosis is personal: What my mother’s Alzheimer’s taught me about healing

      Pearl Jones, MD | Conditions
    • What led me from nurse practitioner to medical school

      Sarah White, APRN | Education
    • Why local cardiac CT scans could save your life

      Benjamin Cohen, MD | Conditions
    • Reassessing the impact of CDC’s opioid guidelines on chronic pain care [PODCAST]

      The Podcast by KevinMD | Podcast
    • Key strategies for smooth EHR transitions in health care

      Sandra Johnson | Tech
    • How proposed NIH budget cuts could derail Alzheimer’s research

      Tamer Hage, Tejas Sekhar, and Swapna Vaja | Conditions

MedPage Today Professional

An Everyday Health Property Medpage Today
  • Terms of Use | Disclaimer
  • Privacy Policy
  • DMCA Policy
All Content © KevinMD, LLC
Site by Outthink Group

Leave a Comment

Comments are moderated before they are published. Please read the comment policy.

Loading Comments...