Developments in the medical world
Medicine or the art of healing?
As a child, I sometimes resented my father. He was a neurologist and psychiatrist. Not a Maxi-Cosi-snowboard-I'm-just-as-hip-as-my-children father, but one who was always busy with work and largely left the upbringing to "our mother," as we said in Brabant. I only played football with my brothers; my father wasn’t really around for that kind of thing, and we missed him. Boys want to be seen and appreciated by their fathers. But now, after years as a specialist myself, I finally understand what a good doctor my father must have been. Now, I feel deep respect for the dedication he showed to that great rival of our family life: the healing profession.
We lived in Veghel, where my father would sometimes be on call for three hospitals for entire weekends. Night after night, he drove from hospital to hospital to patch up drunk young people who had crashed into a tree with their mopeds but without helmets. On Sundays, after mass, he would drag his children to the hospital because he wanted to see his patients every day. He knew them inside and out, so he didn’t prescribe Prozac just because someone was left alone after a divorce or death. Instead, he listened attentively and kept a close eye on them for months afterward. His heart and mind were truly with them.
One day, a farmer sat in his consultation room, terrified, with a twisted face. Farmers never leave their land unless they are really suffering from pain. My father didn’t immediately address the ailment. He first calmly asked how many cows the farmer had. 'About 35!' the farmer answered proudly. My father, with closed eyes, estimated how many hectares of land he must own. The answer was slightly off, and that was exactly the point. The farmer quickly corrected him triumphantly. My father had broken down the unequal power dynamic. Now that the farmer had regained his self-confidence, he was ready for the medical examination, and he knew that he would be treated as an equal by my father.
Some time after my father's death, I heard from a former nurse who had worked with him that, ahead of his time, he applied pioneering music therapies to psychiatric patients. He never spoke to us about that, but it is an example of how he was ever striving to bring his patients the best of the newest techniques.
The professional zeal with which my father and his peers practiced their craft had almost a religious quality. That zeal had ancient roots. In the old oath of Hippocrates, the founder of Western medicine, gods were invoked, and doctors promised to sacrifice their private lives for the healing profession. Hippocrates had great respect for the patient, considered offering comfort a medical duty, and above all, stated that a doctor must never harm the patient.
At the beginning of the 21st century, that solid doctor's morality and duty sometimes seems to be overshadowed by all sorts of new developments. Our technical capabilities have expanded enormously. For example, I now perform minimally invasive surgeries (through small tubes, making smaller incisions) and I use a navigation robot that helps to work more precisely. There have also been groundbreaking scientific revolutions. The discovery of the genome, for instance, which is the anatomy of our hereditary information. There have been major breakthroughs in brain research. There has been a long-needed shift towards so-called enhancement, improving a healthy body alongside curing diseases. These are all fascinating, but sometimes these new technologies seem to want to reduce people to a mechanical system, as if we are cars whose parts can be replaced or pimped at will. Furthermore, thanks to emancipation, there are now many more female doctors, and male doctors want to spend more time on their private lives.
There is also heavier administrative pressure imposed on doctors by regulations, government and insurers, and at the same time patients have become more assertive. They gather plenty of information from the internet and are quicker to turn to a lawyer with complaints.
Despite, and perhaps precisely because of, all these dizzying changes, today's doctors must be careful not to let the consultation room become cold. It is even now more important that it become a place of warmth, a place of understanding and compassion. There seems to be a pill for everything nowadays. Yet many patients long for doctors who show genuine interest in their plight and do not shy away from human understanding.
In new medical training, good communication is included in the curriculum. But communication should never be a mere technique. It must stem from sincere empathy. That's why Hippocrates used the term "healing art." It encompasses more than just technically advanced medicine. Finding the right balance between all these elements may well be the most important challenge for 21st century doctors.
I would give anything to have one long conversation with my father about these matters. I would relish his endless anecdotes and learn from the mistakes he made and the insights he gained. Perhaps, after my third glass of cognac, I would have the courage to confess what I couldn’t when he was alive. That although he wasn’t exactly the father I had always wanted as a child, I deeply admire him because he was a truly good doctor. And that this admiration sometimes suspiciously resembles love. Fervently hoping that he would have forgotten those words after his fourth glass. Because men of his generation and sentiment didn’t mix. Now, I try to be a good doctor in the 21st century without his support. Meaningful to my patients and to a headstrong 10-year-old girl who already shows a suspicious amount of interest in the medical world.
