The Choice

by Dr. Blair Grubb

Image source: Unsplash — Image source: *Unsplash*

In the midst of the current debates on the future of American health care, a much less discussed crisis has been brewing: the growing estrangement of physicians from the very people they seek to treat.

As a physician who has practiced for over 30 years, I know well that modern medicine can do more than ever before to diagnose and often cure illness, but the very patients we treat report an ever-increasing sense of alienation and disenchantment with those who provide their medical care.

And the patients are not alone. Physicians themselves also report a growing sense of dissatisfaction with the current practice of medicine. This disenchantment is underscored by some grim statistics: among professions in America today, physicians now boast the highest rates of suicide, divorce, alcoholism, and substance abuse. It is estimated that 300 to 400 physicians in the United States take their own lives each year, a number that is only projected to grow in the near future.

While the cause of these problems is both varied and complex, I have come to feel that part of the reason lies in modern medicine’s progressive dehumanization of both the patients and the physicians who serve them. Market forces that tout the “bottom line” are now increasingly disrupting the once sacred bonds that linked physicians and their patients.

To some extent, I believe we have forgotten that medicine is neither a science nor a business; rather it is an art that uses science and business as tools to aid in healing the sick, not as ends unto themselves. The increasing distance between medicine and the humanities only serves to aggravate the aforementioned issues. For if we think of the humanities as those activities that most reflect what it is to be human, it could be argued that medicine is one of the humanities’ most prominent fields. What is more human than the act of healing? A patient is not merely a broken machine in need of repair, but rather a unique individual shaped by his or her family, environment, heritage, and culture.

Over time, I began to realize that every patient tells a story, a unique narrative that is critical to understanding not only his or her illness but how that illness had affected his or her life. I also came to realize that sharing in each patient’s story deeply enriched my own life. I began seeing myself less as a “mechanic” and more as a partner in the healing process. More and more, I saw my patients' struggles as reflections of the human condition itself, and our confrontations with fear, despair, hope, and mortality.

I began to write down these experiences in stories that tried to convey the lessons that I had learned from each patient. It was a process made difficult by my almost complete lack of exposure to the humanities throughout the entirety of my previous education.

Yet as I continued to write these stories about the patients I had treated and the “nobility of the spirit” that they showed in their struggles with illness, little by little I found myself carried into the great repositories of wisdom found in literature, poetry, art, and music. I discovered the Bible, the “Divine Comedy'', Maimonides, Camus, and Buber. I listened to Mozart, Verdi, and Glass, and stared in wonder at the works of Turner, Michelangelo, and Rothko.

It was an exploration accelerated by my own personal confrontations with severe illness and loss, those of my family members, and the sickness and death of my first wife.

What I have found in the humanities is a quest to understand the depths of the human condition, and a willingness to venture into places where pure science cannot go. No one turns to his or her chemistry book in times of deep emotional crisis.

I have come to believe that one way to address the growing frustrations of both physicians and patients is to somehow reconnect medicine with the humanities, and allow both parties participating in the act of healing to see themselves more clearly as part of the ongoing human drama in which we each play a role. The humanities can help focus the keen eye of the artist on the problem of illness, and aid in acknowledging the shared humanity of both those who suffer from disease with those who seek to help them. Art, literature, dance, and music all await to share their collective wisdom with us.

If we achieve this reconnection, perhaps physicians can once again see ourselves not as mere “biomedical technicians”, but rather as “healers” in the truest sense of the word. The choice is ours.

Sources

Anderson, Pauline. (2018). Doctors' Suicide Rate Highest of Any Profession. WebMD. Retrieved from https://www.webmd.cohttps://www.webmd.com/mental-health/news/20180508/doctors-suicide-rate-highest-of-any-professionm/mental-health/news/20180508/doctors-suicide-rate-highest-of-any-profession

Farmer, Blake (2018). Doctors Grapple with High Suicide Rates in Their Ranks. Scientific American. Retrieved from https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/doctors-grapple-with-high-suicide-rates-in-their-ranks/

Suicide among doctors. (2021). Wikipedia. Retrieved from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Suicide_among_doctors#:~:text=In%20the%20United%20States%20of,double%20that%20of%20general%20population.