Is Communication between Doctors and Patients worth Re-evaluating?

After completing my inquiry paper, I have begun to think about what I want to claim for my convincing paper. I started to follow the steps outlined in “Aims of Argument”. For my thesis, I want to state that doctors should have strong communication with their patients and understand the behaviors and experiences that led the patient to procure his ailment in order to provide the most effective medical care. This is a broad statement, and I hope that I can narrow it down by finding case studies for evidence. First, I need to consider the audience that I am writing for. The inquiry paper was like a conversation with myself, as I organized my own thoughts on paper: the thoughts that led me to this topic. But my intended audience for the convincing paper is pre-medical students. I considered appealing my argument to doctors, but after the discussion we had in class today, I feel that should be reserved for the persuasion paper. Some doctors have entrenched views as to how they should deal with patients, whereas pre-medical students have yet to begin their medical training, so they are open to different views of patient care.

I have developed some reasons to support my thesis. I found an article that talked about the treatment of psychosomatic disorder, in which the patient experiences physical pain due to internal thoughts and perceptions but does not show any signs of bodily dysfunction. It is difficult to discern whether this is a condition that should be treated by a psychiatrist or a medical doctor. However, patients become frustrated when doctors don’t take them seriously, and doctors cannot treat ailments that they can’t see. In this situation, a study gave an example of a treatment that a medical doctor could conduct which involved extensive interviews with a patient. These interviews will hopefully reveal the mental causes of the physical symptoms, and patients will form a bond of trust with the medical doctor, which may alleviate some of the symptoms. One counterargument may be that these patients should just go see a therapist, but knowing that a medical doctor is looking at a patient gives the patient satisfaction that he is being taken seriously. If someone thinks he has a physical ailment, it will only aggravate him when he is told that the symptoms are all in his head. Understanding this aspect of patient psychology can be useful to doctors. I can use this argument in a way that will appeal to the audience’s experiences and belief system. Surely someone reading my paper will know how frustrating it is when others don’t give him proper attention when he is trying to explain something that means a lot to him.

I can also use expert opinion in my reasoning. I went into extensive detail about the biopsychosocial approach to medicine in a few posts and in my inquiry paper. George Engel, the creator of this theory, endorses verbal communication between doctors and patients and criticizes a doctor in a published letter for failing to do so. This primary source of Engel’s work will hopefully strengthen my argument.
I anticipate that a counterargument for my point of view will be that doctors have several patients to attend to in a short period of time, and therefore are on a tight schedule which will not allow them to devote so much time to one patient. I will try to refute this viewpoint using reasoning by comparison. I have not yet thought of a concrete example, but I do know that there are many situations in which talking extensively to a person that someone is trying to help allows him to provide the best care. For instance, suppose there was a tough homework assignment in a class with over a hundred students, and a student did not fully grasp the concepts needed to do the homework. Therefore, he goes into the professor’s office hours. If the professor displays the attitude that he has a hundred other students to attend to, and therefore cannot give the student the time he needs to understand the concepts, then the student’s needs are not being met. The professor could simply refer the student to a textbook or external source to find the information, which is analogous to a doctor simply prescribing pills to a patient. However, in both cases, extensive interactions are needed between both parties involved in order to maximize the help or treatment that the person needs.

Hopefully these ideas that I have circulating in my thoughts will evolve and evoke new ideas I could use for further evidence.