Essay question: "Doctors into the future will face many difficulties over and above those regarding medical diagnosis and treatment of disease. Their role in contemporary society; patients' prospects and their usage of information on health issues; and the legal and regulatory environment of medical practice are changing. Elaborate briefly on what these changes are and discuss their implications for you as an aspiring physician"
Change is thought as an act or process by which something becomes different. Bound together with time, we must learn to adapt to these differences even as advance in time. In professional medical, such changes include; changes in culture, technological advances, clinical breakthrough and even medical practice. These in turn have effect on the tasks of doctors in modern culture & the targets of the patients.
Medicine is the knowledge or practice of the diagnosis, treatment, and prevention of disease. As ambassadors of medicine, physicians connect research with society. A physician is defined as a person certified to practise remedies, especially one who specializes in analysis and medical treatment as distinct from surgery. The jobs and goals of a physician are inserted into its meaning itself. However, technology and society is never constant. Its volatile nature creates proportional change to the roles of doctors in culture.
Being people of medicine, the functions of your physician are simple; diagnose, treat, prevent. However these assignments have changed over the years. In the past, doctors used to have to deal with hoards of patients. With such a health care provider - patient proportion, quality of service cannot be retained at a high. Yet, in a changing modern culture, the percentage has improved greatly. The number of medical professionals and patients have increased and reduced respectively. But this improvement also created a demand for improvement in quality of health services.
Nowadays, physicians are not only necessary to provide physical treatment. They are also a turn to for psychological support. The word 'Medicine' comes from its Latin ancestor 'Medicus'. When translated right to English, 'Medicus' is known as 'Medical professional'. This progression from the term 'Medicus' to the present term 'Medicine' is a good representation of the progressive development of the role of a physician. Now, 'Medicus' no longer only encompasses the 'Doctor' and his or her ability to tend to the physical health of a patient. Medicine also will involve the physician to have a tendency to the emotional and mental health of the patient. Previously, due to the high number of patients, there is inadequate time for doctors to have a tendency to extra needs of the individual. Currently, besides being able to make an accurate diagnosis, the jobs of a physician likewise incorporate empathy. Empathy is a car for compassion and allows physicians to make a personal relationship with the patients. It places the doctor in to the patient's shoes, allowing them to realize the emotional, mental and social aspects to drugs. However, sometimes too much empathy can cause doctors getting too emotionally attached to the outcome of the patients and can cause unneeded stress. A good example could be feminine physicians creating a higher suicide rate as compared to their men counterparts as females tend to be emotional. In this point in time, the assignments of your physician are not only what's found in its classification, but also includes the welfare of their patient.
Patients of days gone by and present both show a standard expectation; treatment and get rid of. They see doctors as a remedy to their health. However over time, the list of patient anticipations is far much longer than just a remedy for their health. Medicine has become more patient oriented. Its demand for empathy for patients is a clear landmark of the progression. Along with this progression is also the progression and change of patient anticipations.
As mentioned earlier, doctors had too many patients and too little time. Over the years, the public has become more educated and have a better sense of personal healthcare, decreasing the number of patients. More people have signed up for Medical School and also have thus increased the amount of physicians, improving the physician - patient ratio. This improvement has generated change in patient objectives. Patients expect medical doctors to be empathetic and to cater to mental, public and mental aspects of their health. The advancement of medical research in addition has increased knowledge on our body which resulted in the specializing of doctors into different channels of remedies. However, this surprise of increased knowledge created a demand by patients for a far more particular service than that which was available a long time ago.
Before the development of 24 hour clinics or the Mishap & Emergency division, medical care had not been immediate. Doctors possessed to travel out to patients' homes to have a tendency to them. This increase in accessibility and convenience of healthcare services has also changed objectives of patients. Patients now expect immediate service when compared with when patients then experienced to hold back for the physician to arrive at their homes.
Aside from these improvements in healthcare, there is certainly one change in population which trumps all of them; the creativity and progression of technology. The term "physician" comes from its Latin form "physica". The word "physica" was described as "things associated with nature". The development of the word from its Latin form to its English derivative obviously depicts the transformation of Medicine; the utilization of characteristics, to the development and use of current technology & technology. Back then, the lack of technology also left doctors with the energy of observation and qualitative reasoning to produce a diagnosis, or even more realistically speaking, a 'smart guess' of the patient's condition.
The medical field has been privileged to take advantage of the progression in technology. Such breakthroughs ranged from the early French invention of the stethoscope to the American technology of Magnetic Resonance Imaging. The pin point reliability of technology today allows medical doctors to make more exact and correct diagnoses. It includes increased the efficiency of doctors as compared to when that they had to invest a couple of days observing the patient to make a prognosis. Technology in addition has opened the door to greater kinds of research, which allows for future discoveries and innovations. Therefore increases the understanding of physicians and permits improvement in patient attention.
However there is one progression in technology that has greatly impacted the medical field in terms of professional medical practice; the internet. Usually, any technical advances in medication are managed by the doctor. Nevertheless the internet differs from other scientific advances as the World Wide Web can be seen by both patient and medical doctor. This world-wide access to information on health issues has triggered many changes in patient objectives and the jobs of a physician.
Traditionally, doctors were patients' response to any medical concerns. However, the internet has destroyed that traditions. Being the world's greatest source of information, the amount of information the internet keeps has no boundaries. Pubmed, a composition of 23 million citations for biomedical books, can be easily found on the internet. These details can be utilized by anyone and everyone. Even the info which physicians seek advice from from time to time can be reached by patients. Medical students talk to Google on a daily basis when faced with any uncertainty of these content. Professors and lecturers teaching these future doctors also make recommendations to different websites on the internet. Videos found on popular loading site, YouTube, also contain medical and surgical procedures uploaded by recognized physicians and doctors that can be seen by everyone. With usage of such information, patients can learn about different diseases and the ways to avoid them. An ounce of protection is always better than a pound of treat.
The internet is undeniably the best source of medical information. However every expert includes a con. Patients now have prioritized the internet over the doctor. Nowadays, patients choose to consult Google before consulting doctors. Patients look to online forums, consulting others who have had somewhat comparable symptoms to themselves. Patients tend to self diagnose themselves after looking up what diseases include the symptoms they may have. What patients don't understand is that different sicknesses can have common symptoms. This access to information on diseases and their symptoms can trigger unneeded hypochondria and lead to patients assuming they could have an illness more tragic than exactly what it is.
In a different scenario, those who have consulted their doctor first have a tendency to consult the internet after for different forms of treatment for what they are diagnosed with. These patients have problems with a disorder of believing anything seen on display screen. What is forgotten is that popular research sites, such as Wikipedia, pool information contributed and cited by the users of the internet. However not absolutely all home elevators Wikipedia is cited, a few of which still require a citation. Some websites which provide false information online tend to hyperlink viewers to other sites which promote the same bogus information. Multiple sites with the same information tend to create a feeling of authenticity regardless of the information being false. With these details at hand, patients present it to their doctors so when told it is untrue, they insist upon its authenticity and blame doctors on being ignorant or being uninformed.
