Compassion
Being in a state university, with inadequacy of state-of-the-art facilities, we are trained to be as compassionate as possible to our patient. The term encompasses the quality of care we should give to our patients when we’re already doctors and the inexpensive approach with regards to treatment. They’ve been inculcating in our minds that we should think of our patients first before we think of our pockets. And I think, they have been successful because of the good feedbacks to most of our graduates.
Our school is a community-based program and we have been successful with implementing it. In fact, some of our classmates were once invited to a symposium which was I think hosted by UP-PGH. They were asked to share the way we do Community Medicine.
Anyways, I was talking about this because a classmate and I had an argument over using CT scan and Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI) as one of the diagnostics for our head trauma patient. To differentiate the two, MRI is more sensitive than CT scan in localizing tumors or whatever brain injury especially with deeper structures. So he wanted the patient to undergo MRI while I opted to do a CT scan instead, for financial reasons. He was insisting on MRI because he says the patient is capable to spend money to the said procedure. His point was why hamper the faster diagnosis, thus more prompt treatment, of the patient with a less sensitive tool when you can choose a more reliable one. I was disappointed with his answer. Yeah, these tools can confirm your diagnosis but still a doctor should still give more emphasis to the history and physical examination of the patient. These tools give mere confirmatory findings so there’s no need for a more sophisticated one to diagnose. That is if you didn’t practice your history and PE well during medical school years. When he heard my rebuttal, he stopped arguing. I hope he realized my point.
It’s just sad that some of our physicians subject their patients to very expensive diagnostics and treatment when there are much less expensive options. As they say it, you’re just adding insult to the injury.
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