“The imbalance of power between patients and doctors: the price of ignoring the shadow”
Christian Koeck.
Sickness and the inevitability of death triggers fears and loss of control and power. To cope with that fear, modern society has colluded with modern medicine to promise that disease can be defeated and death postponed, if not avoided. .. Patients yield up power to physicians because one has knowledge and the other is apparently ignorant. Doctors decide and patients follow…
Both sides pay a high price for this unbalanced interaction. Patients do not receive optimal treatment because their knowledge is never used and their needs and abilities have never been fully understood. Disconnected from their disease and care process, they may be unable to follow the treatment and are consequently labelled non-compliant.
In their turn, doctors feel overwhelmed and suffer from depression, substance misuse, and the highest rates of suicide among the academic professions … Instead patients need to be handed back the responsibility for their own bodies and diseases. Doctors can provide help, not salvation.
For the full text of this article, go to <thebmj.com> BMJ 2014: 349:g7485
Does this remind you of another power imbalance in your life, or in society?
Could you write a similar set of paragraphs explaining the price of ignoring the imbalance of power between … teachers and students? Parents and children? Clergy and congregation? A state servant and a beneficiary? A caregiver and a bed-ridden older person?