Doctor: Hidden medical school agenda' puts efficiency over patients. UPI\/Mike Theiler <\/p>\n
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NEW YORK, June 28 (UPI) -- A U.S. doctor says a \"hidden medical school curriculum\" teaches hierarchies, values efficiency over patients and cultivates a doctor-patient communication sham. <\/p>\n
Dr. Danielle Ofri, who has practiced medicine at New York City's Bellevue Hospital for the last two decades is the author of the \"What Doctors Feel: How Emotions Affect the Practice of Medicine.\" She says the medical world offers daily challenges to doctors' empathy. <\/p>\n
Ofri said medical students lose empathy in their clinical years as they try to deliver medical care in a world of increasing paperwork and sleep deprivation, and it often sends doctors into the field jaded and embittered. <\/p>\n
However, compassion can be hard to summon, when patients are hostile or manipulative, entitled or arrogant or have illnesses that appear to be self-induced, such as drug and alcohol addictions or morbid obesity, Ofri said. <\/p>\n
Culture, class and language barriers, can also work against doctors staying in touch with their patients' suffering. Asian patients tend to keep up a stoic front, Ofri noted, meaning doctors stop \"seeing\" their pain, while Hispanic patients are known for being very vocal about their symptoms, so doctors might quickly stop listening. <\/p>\n
There has been a steady stream of research into how doctors think -- disillusionment with the realities of being a doctor, frustration because some patients cannot be helped or resentment toward those who will not help themselves, Ofri said. Yet little attention has been focused on how they process emotions -- and how those emotions affect the quality of medical care they provide, the doctor said <\/p>\n
\"Doctors who are angry, nervous, jealous, burned out, terrified or ashamed can usually still treat bronchitis or ankle sprains competently,\" Ofri said in a statement. <\/p>\n
\"Problems arise when clinical situations are convoluted, unyielding, or overlaid with unexpected complications, medical errors, or psychological components. This is where factors other than clinical competency come into play.\" <\/p>\n
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Physician reveals the 'hidden agenda' of medical school<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Doctor: Hidden medical school agenda' puts efficiency over patients. UPI\/Mike Theiler License photo NEW YORK, June 28 (UPI) -- A U.S. doctor says a \"hidden medical school curriculum\" teaches hierarchies, values efficiency over patients and cultivates a doctor-patient communication sham. Continue reading