Forum: Medical care and what love’s got to do with it
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I was struck by the headline of associate foreign editor Li Xueying’s article, “ Cities can be liveable. But what makes them lovable?
I am a semi-retired paediatrician, and emeritus consultant in a hospital. I have been concerned about what I have observed in medical students and young doctors in Singapore, and gave a talk some time ago entitled, “The art of medicine – what has love got to do with it?”
It seems both Ms Li and I are concerned about love – she, about the lovableness of our city; me, about the role of love in medical care.
You may also suspect that we wrote about “love” because we sense a lack of it – in the city, and in medical care.
What is good medical care?
It’s obvious to everyone that a good doctor should be knowledgeable about his area of expertise.
I can say honestly that our medical schools produce some of the brightest young doctors in the world. But I also sense that something is lacking – the human touch. I suspect that many doctors’ understanding of excellence stops short at technical expertise, that many of them may not see that patients need and even desire something beyond that – a human connection that is intangible, not measurable in key performance indicators.
Maybe we should be reminded of an observation that Sir William Osler, a pioneer in the field of clinical medical education, made: “The good physician treats the disease, the great physician treats the patient with the disease”.
Patients, with their anxieties and fears, often need the art of a “healer” more than the medicine dispensed by the doctor.
They can sense whether their physicians genuinely care for them, even love them, or are just dispensing their technical skills.
Quah Thuan Chong (Dr)
