What are the characteristics that a good doctor must possess? The BMJ spent an entire issue to trying to figure out what was going on. The editors addressed the question to its readers, and over 100 people responded. MD Linx offers insight into the most common attributes of a good doctor in this article. According to John Saunders, MD, MA, previous chair, Committee for Ethical Issues in Medicine, Royal College of Physicians, London, UK, compassion is the “capacity to empathise with the suffering of another or to envisage ourselves in a comparable position.”
Sympathy “is a crucial component of positive medical care in many situations and needs a foundation in morals,” according to Dr. Saunders, who acknowledges that some people are born compassionate while others are not. Those who aren’t naturally compassionate, on the other hand, shouldn’t give up. “Sympathy is a excellence that can be nurtured in all of us, regardless of our personalities.”
Understanding
What exactly is comprehension? “In a nutshell,” writes education expert David Perkins, PhD, in the book Teaching for Understanding: Linking Research with Practice, “understanding is the ability to think and act with what one learns.”
So, how prepares this affect you and your patients? You want your patients to comprehend your suggestions, such as how and when to take a medicine, as well as the advantages and adverse effects, or what a surgery entails and the potential results. To put it another way, you want your patients to be able to act and make decisions based on their newfound information.
Change places with your patient now. They want you to value their information and be able to apply it appropriately. When you consider things in that light, how well do you genuinely get what your patient is trying to say?
Sympathy
Sympathy is best described as a feeling of warmth. According to the authors of a new research on the issue, empathy is “a social-emotional ability with two sympathy components: one affective: the ability to share the emotions of others, and one cognitive: the ability to know the emotions of others.”
To put it another way, sympathy is an emotional identification that involves both the heart and the mind.
Patients may feel that doctors who display warmth are less knowledgeable or competent, and as a result, these doctors must choose between being viewed as competent and being perceived as empathic. In their research, however, the authors discovered the exact opposite. Nonverbal empathic conduct, such as eye contact, smiling, and uncrossed arms, was associated with feelings of warmth and competence in doctors.
Honesty
Being open and honest with patients should be second nature to you. It’s right there in the Code of Medical Ethics of the American Medical Association.
Unfortunately, modern medicine can lead 420 doctors into murky zones where the most beneficial thing to say may not be the most accurate thing to say. According to a countrywide study of over 1,900 practising physicians conducted in 2013, one-fifth of physicians believe that lying is not always wrong. More over one-tenth of doctors acknowledged to lying to patients in the previous year.
Competence
“The vast majority of doctors in the United States satisfy a basic level of competence—our system of licensure, board tests, and other measures assure that the vast majority of physicians have at least a basic degree of understanding. What most people don’t realize is that even within this group, there are significant differences in capability and clinical judgment “Harvard School of Public Health, Cambridge, MA, writes Ashish Jha, MD, MPH.
