Doctor as teacher
In medical school we were told that patients remember about 10% of what they are told in a hospital or clinic. Is this because they aren’t smart enough to grasp the jargon that doctors spend 4 years learning and 50 years perfecting? Or is it because….they didn’t go to medical school for whatever reason?
My Husband is brilliant, but if I wanted to really confuse him it wouldn’t be too hard. In just the same way he can make me feel like an idiot if he chooses to drown me in engineer-speak. If we spent all of our time throwing out the $50 words we would never communicate. I think some doctors like to intimidate patients with jargon so they won’t be questioned.
I believe that people are generally pretty smart. I also believe that there are ways to explain medicine that are neither unnecessarily complicated nor condescending. DOCERE – doctor as teacher…is a pledge I swore to when I graduated from medical school. Don’t be embarrassed to ask questions or to write your list of questions down. I will explain as simply and thoroughly as I can, and if I don’t know the answer I will tell you that honestly, and then I will research until I find the answer.
-Dr Michele Raithel NMD
October 22nd, 2008 at 9:24 am
This is a very important point. The fact of the matter is for the most part we simply don’t know how to live in a healthy way, our modern lifestyle tends to make us disconnected from the way we eat, basic physical activity and even something as immediate as our breathing pattern. To take full advantage of teachers such as Naturopathic Doctors we must recognize that going to the doctor so they can fix us once we’re already sick is not a healthy attitude, even if it is a doctor that practices natural medicine. We must each take responsibility for our own health and play an active role in our care if we are really interested in being well.