Doctors Have Feelings, Too - NYTimes.com
".....Last month, an article in the journal Health Affairs made headlines in
the news media — “Physicians Are Not Always Open or Honest with
Patients.” A vast majority of the nearly 2,000 doctors surveyed agreed
that physicians should be fully open and honest in all their
communications with patients, as the Charter on Medical Professionalism
requires, but more than one in 10 had specifically told a patient
something that was not true within the past year. Almost one in five had
not revealed a medical error. More than half had framed a prognosis in a
more positive light than was warranted.
The authors expressed concern that doctors were not fully living up to
the charter; patients worried that they couldn’t trust what their
doctors said. I also found the data disturbing, but for different
reasons. I don’t think that doctors are generally a dishonest bunch.
Yes, there are a few utter miscreants out there, and many more who could
use a tune-up on their communication skills. But I suspect that the
dishonesty that is being uncovered in a study such as this — and
frankly, I was amazed that the number of less-than-truthful instances
was so low — reveals more about the diagnosis of being human than
anything else.
When Julia walked out of our hospital without full knowledge of her
prognosis, I had been derelict in my duty as her physician. I was fully
aware that my job was to have “open and honest” communication with her,
in a “patient centered” manner. But I couldn’t. I couldn’t bring myself
to tell this young mother that she was going to die........"
