Time and talk play role in healing

Time and talk play role in healing

Accurate information is important when making choices in confronting illness, and the June 28 Vindicator article regarding the potential for overtreatment of terminal illness (“Treated to death, are treatments too much?”) highlights some interesting aspects of the state of health care delivery in our times.

While fighting to the bitter end is ingrained in our culture, the concept can be dangerous and counterproductive in certain situations, as exemplified by Ms. Drane’s work. It is unfortunate that our system of caring for patients, or more accurately how our system pays for care, is strongly oriented toward providing procedures, tests, and treatments rather than toward physician-patient interaction emphasizing comprehension on both parts.

A physician needs to spend more time with a patient in order to understand their wishes in treatment, and in order for the patient to understand the implications of whatever course of action they may choose. Instead, little or no value is assigned to such an approach, and when combined with the win-at-all-cost attitude, what results can be worse than the disease. Providers are paid to act, not to talk or to educate. The assumption that more tests and more drugs and more surgeries equals better care or higher chance of cure can be dangerous, if applied without fuller disclosure and understanding than we currently can afford to have.

Greater emphasis and value should be placed on the primary aspects of care, which are centered on the relationship between physician and patient, rather than our focus on profit for performance.

Thomas S. Boniface MD, Youngstown

The writer is a clinical associate professor of orthopaedics at NEOUCOM, a fellow of the Institute for Professionalism Inquiry and a member of the Society for Patient Centered Orthopaedics.