Modern medicine has a lot to show for all our breakthroughs and biotechnology. At an astonishingly rapid rate, we have built a health care system that can map the genome, replace a heart valve, and monitor vital signs from a wristwatch. All this to show that medicine’s success has always been measured in cures, and in that pursuit, we have forgotten to care. This is where medicine fails.
A cure is intervention. It prescribes medicine, provides relief, and orders tests. But care is a relationship. It listens, believes, and bears witness to suffering that may not have a direct cause and doesn’t demand full understanding to offer compassion. Advances in medical research have revolutionized the treatment of complex diseases, yet such progress is meaningless if pain is doubted and patients are denied the very care those discoveries were meant to provide.
A recent survey conducted in the U.K. found that more than 84 percent of women expressed that there was at least one instance where their symptoms were dismissed upon first contact, they had to persistently advocate for themselves to secure a diagnosis, or were limited in opportunities to discuss or ask questions about their symptoms. Across the world, women have learned that to be a patient is to be doubted. In moments like this, medicine needs to learn how to say, “I believe you.”
The gender pain gap
To be even more specific, women are more likely to experience chronic pain conditions as compared to men of the same age and tend to report more severe pain associated with it. A multitude of conditions have been associated with a female predominance, some of which include migraines, fibromyalgia, rheumatoid arthritis, and osteoarthritis.
Despite all this, women are more likely to encounter skepticism regarding the severity or legitimacy of their symptoms. For generations, women’s health concerns have been minimized or misdiagnosed, from endometriosis being written off as “bad cramps” to postpartum depression being labeled as “baby blues.” These very real experiences represent a system that prioritizes a list of symptoms, and what doesn’t fit into the pathology is irrelevant. Women’s health has always existed at the edge of medicine and is a prime example of how medicine has forgotten how to care.
Invisible identities in research
Clinical research continues to reveal that minority groups are rendered invisible within the health care system. In radiation therapy, for example, many clinical trials still fail to collect or consider information about sexual orientation and gender identity, creating evidence bases that assume all patients experience illness and treatment in the same way. When identities are omitted, the unique burdens, vulnerabilities, and care needs of these populations disappear as well.
This reflects a broader pattern in modern medicine in which we invest immense effort in perfecting protocols, refining technologies, and improving survival curves, yet far less attention is paid to understanding who our patients are and how their lived experiences shape their encounters with illness. When whole communities are excluded from research frameworks, it sets the precedent that the system values the disease more than the person carrying it. Health care as a discipline measures success by outcome; it stands with what it can quantify and neglects what it cannot. But the act of listening, believing, and healing rarely fits into an electronic health record.
Restoring care to the center of medicine
Restoring care to the center of medicine means reevaluating what healing means to us. Is healing simply a return to physical function, or is it also the feeling of being supported and heard? When care is present, patients are more likely to follow treatment plans, report satisfaction, and maintain long-term relationships with their physicians. A study published in 2021 found that patients who felt their physicians listened carefully were 32 percent more likely to follow treatment recommendations and 26 percent less likely to experience worsening symptoms.
Clinicians can begin by confronting the biases and evidence gaps that shape their decision-making, approaching each encounter with humility, and acknowledging that historically excluded populations may not fit into the framework medicine has relied upon. More tangible changes to improving patient outcomes and providing care would be to implement a “diagnostic pause” when symptoms don’t neatly align with typical presentations, allowing for intentional re-evaluation of symptoms to decrease premature closure and force clinicians to think more about differential diagnoses. Furthermore, clinicians should attempt to schedule more follow-ups to ensure that a patient feels secure in their care, especially in complicated cases that require more nuance.
The failure to care and listen affects patients of every identity, race, and background. To build a truly equitable and healing system, medicine must remember that every patient, regardless of who they are or where they come from, deserves to be believed, respected, and cared for as more than a diagnosis. The question is simple: To care or to cure? To care more is not to reject science; it is to complete it. Compassion is what bridges the gap between diagnosis and healing.
Cherie Shah is a medical student.
