Journal Entry 5

Shahadat Rahman

Professor Matyakubova

English 21003

October 12, 2017

Journal Entry #5

In Janice Lynch Schuster’s article “The Miracle In Front of You: Raymond Barfield On Practicing Medicine With Compassion,” the renowned surgeon and philosopher Raymond Barfield explains his views on doctors and how the lack empathy when treating patients. He claims that this is partly due to the fact that much of doctors’ interactions with patients are controlled by hospital administrations as well as insurance companies. Even the way doctors treat patients are controlled by these bodies as well. Being a doctor is not as idyllic a sit seems, where doctors are free to save lives and treat patients how they want. Often times if a patient does not have great insurance and a treatment is not cost effective, the patient will not be able to receive that care. For example, there have been numerous cases of patients with Huntington’s disease, a fatal condition, who run out of insurance due to the amount of care they need. After this, hospitals refuse to give the patients the costly surgeries they need, sending them home to die instead. Therefore, it can be asked, how can the way doctors treat patients improve so they can interact more?

The solution to the way doctors treat patients lies in radically improving healthcare; healthcare should be centered around the patient instead of insurance companies getting paid. This means that doctors who work in primary care — who focus on keeping patients healthy — should be value more than those who focus on a specialty and often resort to treating singular or last-resort issues. Primary care doctors spend the most time with their patients, yet are restricted on how they can treat their patients, providing no incentive to give the quality care that patients deserve. Furthermore, victims of chronic diseases should receive team care from a group of doctors rather than seeing individual doctors. The current healthcare system focuses on episodic care and does not deal with chronic care. Doctors often ignore the collateral damage caused by the diseases patients face. Patients should be given insight by the team of doctors treating them on how to maximize the quality of their lives. This would help treat the patient and not just the disease, as well as provide more personal care.