Thursday, August 09, 2007

Some interesting thoughts from a doctor who doesn't think doctors do enough for their patients

This is from the memoirs of a doctor posted up at the NIH. I found it while researching the Morro Castle disaster.

Over the years I have been puzzled by the fact that none of the several aids
to my way of life that I have discovered was brought to my attention by any of
the ophthalmologists whom I consulted. It seems to me that the student of
diseases of the eye should be particularly well equipped to advise the visually
handicapped on his sources of satisfaction and gratification, yet no such
advice was forthcoming. These ideas were brought to a head when I was con-
sulted by a fellow worker at the National Institutes of Health whose chronically
progressive retinal disease was under study at the National Eye Institute.
Neither her ophthalmologist nor anyone else had ever mentioned to her such
readily available adjuncts as large-print books, the large-print edition of the
New York Times, or any of the many aids to the visually impaired. I therefore
wrote of my own experiences and sent the manuscript to my own ophthalmologist,
requesting his recommendations as to the best place to publish it. Receiving
no answer to my request, I mailed the manuscript to the New England Journal of
Medicine where, rather to my surprise, it was accepted and published. There
resulted by far the largest wave of correspondence and telephone calls that any
publication of mine has ever elicited. Many of the respondents were either
visually impaired or were relatives of visually impaired persons. Some were
ophthalmologists and a few were physicians in other specialties. Most of the
letters were supportive and friendly and many recounted experiences which
paralleled my own. It thus appears that failure on the part of the ophthal-
mologist to direct his blind patients to agencies which may improve the quality
of their lives is not an isolated phenomenon. On the contrary, it appears to
be quite widespread. Furthermore, as some of the writers of letters pointed
out to me, the phenomenon is not peculiar to ophthalmology. Indeed, in many
fields of medical specialization it seems that the specialist, once he has
given all possible consideration to his particular organ or organ systems,
feels little further responsibility for his patient. "This man is blind and
there is nothing that I can do for him." "This woman has multiple sclerosis
and there is little or nothing that I can do for her."


This memoir is dated 1983 and was written by Dewitt Stetten Jr, a doctor who was blind when he "wrote" these memoirs.

http://www.history.nih.gov/articles/DeWittStettenMemoirs.pdf

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