Viewpoint

Dr. Manners

GUEST EDITORIAL WRITTEN BY

Stephanie Becker, MD

I’ve noticed that colleagues are more cranky these days; is their ill-humor due to the practice of medicine? We deal with ICD 10 conversions, EMR entries, premium lens sales and bottom line advancement, none of which has anything to do with the Hippocratic Oath. Our days are more challenging, competitive, stressful.

So we’re a little cranky. And, we aren’t minding our manners.

In the olden days, fellow ophthalmologists publicly sang each other’s praises — even if privately there was no like lost. If someone standing behind you at the supermarket checkout asked about so-and-so, we’d say glowing things about so-and-so; even if that’s exactly what he was.

AN ILLUSTRATIVE TALE

Here’s a tale that illustrates my point. A woman 80 years of age, non-driver, avid reader, +3 hyperope OU goes to her ophthalmologist. With pre-op counseling, she opts for multifocal IOLs OU. An uneventful surgery, her vision is 20/20 OU for distance. She can read her paperback novels without difficulty. In her 80 years, this is the best vision she’s had, she says.

A family member, a physician, wants to “make sure the surgery was done right” so he takes the patient for a second opinion. The jurist is the chair of the Department of Ophthalmology of a local university. He tells the patient her surgery is terrible; she is a poor candidate for multifocal lenses; she should have an IOL exchange immediately or halos will accompany her night driving the rest of her life. He closes with he does not “believe in multifocal lenses.”

At first, the patient is confused. She feels bad, thinking she hurt her doctor’s feelings for getting another opinion.

But, this patient trusts her instincts and returns to her surgeon to talk through the second opinion. She tells him how upset she is that another physician would speak so disrespectfully about a colleague’s work. She knew her surgical result was excellent. She received the second opinion, she tells him, to appease her family member.

I think we would all agree this situation could have been handled more tactfully.

We’ve come full circle to the topic of manners. A host of options exist in the treatment of patients, so expect to have differences of opinion about surgical treatment plans, IOL choices, even technology, which is both blessing and curse because judgment is involved. But different judgments among colleagues don’t entitle you to rip someone’s head off because his opinion differs from yours.

We are in the healing business together. We share goals. We work hard and do our best. Enough forces are working against us — adding our own kind into that bucket defies logic, blasphemes the Oath.

Besides, patients will respect us more if we respect each other. OM