A question I asked myself daily when my children were growing up is what am I setting the stage for? That may seem like a less than emotional approach to parenting. It is. But based on my family of origin, thoughtfulness was always better than my initial emotional instinct.
I didn’t sit and study an issue for hours. I just quickly played out the lesson I was teaching to the extreme. Quick example: When my 2-year-old took a Happy Meal toy from another 2-year-old, I suggested he apologize. As I watched his fury and reluctance, I knew he wasn’t sorry. If I pursued pressuring him at that moment, I was teaching him to be disingenuous aka lie.
I’m not discounting that he needed to learn to be polite and kind and function well in society. But that required a more thoughtful and lengthy discussion repeated over time.
If I teach a child to lie at a time in their development that I’m also attempting to teach him to tell the truth about throwing my ring in the trash, feeding the dog chocolate, or breaking his grandmother’s vase, can he differentiate or will he determine he should just ignore me because I make no sense?
You could argue I’m only teaching him to be emotionally disingenuous. Okay, well how will that play out in his adult relationships, especially intimate ones? Will he adopt polite appeasement over the truth? Maybe or maybe not, but the stage has certainly been set for it.
Each decision we make as a parent sets the stage for something. It is worth considering for what. This is also true as business owners or corporate citizens. And it is true of healthcare.
The US healthcare system set the stage for people to seek answers elsewhere. Unfortunately, this has led to doubting science along with healthcare professionals. But dismissing people who run to Dr. Google first is to miss the point of the patient experience.
The aftermath of 2020 led many institutions away from the emphasis they were putting on patient-centered care. This is unfortunate. And even with a movement toward listening to the patient, the system in general needed hearing aids.
Many patients with GI problems suffer through years of no diagnosis, misdiagnosis, ineffective medication, being treated as though they’re crazy. And then years of paying off the invoices generated in getting them no relief. Why wouldn’t they mistrust a system that is not serving them?
A lot of those patients want to be treated by someone who cares to get to the root of the problem even if it means trying something besides medication. I’ve written before about the doctor I had coffee with who said he would never put someone on a gluten-free diet unless they had a positive biopsy. I understand the importance of best practices, but a gluten-free diet does no harm and might give him helpful information toward diagnosis.
Can we get past rigidity of thinking when we know our diagnostic tools are limited? Opting for surgery in an unclear diagnostic situation is considered acceptable. Is that because surgery gins more money through the system?
Why is a non-harmful approach rejected when a potentially dangerous procedure is considered acceptable within the standard of care? The answer may not be simple. Sometimes, it’s just that the physician you rely on is not well-informed on new research or developments. Sometimes, it’s fear of being sued. Often, it’s that huge systems are not nimble and move slowly.
But sometimes a complex answer gets simplified to – we’re following science – and presented to the patient. Great job! Now you’ve set the stage for that patient to distrust science.
And such incidents may come on top of setting the stage for patients to distrust the way medicine is practiced because they haven’t been provided a diagnosis or effective treatment. Further, they may have been treated as if they’re crazy (especially if they’re female).
Posters on Reddit and BlueSky last week asked people to post the most ridiculous thing a doctor had ever said to them with a straight face. These posts received hundreds of replies and thousands of replies and reposts.
We’re reaping the results of distrust in science in things like measles outbreaks. That is bad and dangerous. But until the healthcare system chooses some self-reflection, it will continue to set the stage for distrust.
Disclosure of Material Connection: I have not received any compensation for writing this post. I have no material connection to the brands, products, or services that I have mentioned. I am disclosing this in accordance with the Federal Trade Commission’s 16 CFR, Part 255: “Guides Concerning the Use of Endorsements and Testimonials in Advertising.”
