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Medicine is an Art

By Arlene F. Harder, MA, MFT

There Are Often Many Options

When your family physician sends you to a specialist, he believes that person is best for you—or, in this day of managed care, that specialist may only be the one are allowed to see. In any case, when you talk with that person, you will learn what that person thinks is best for you. For example, suppose you have cancer. If the specialist is a surgeon, surgery is most likely going to be suggested. If he or she is an oncologist, chemotherapy will probably be part of the treatment proposed. And what if the specialist is a radiologist? You're right, there is a good chance that radiation therapy will be suggested.

There is nothing intrinsically wrong with any of these choices. It is just that they are limited. Experts in both non-traditional and mainstream therapy are most knowledgeable about their own specialty and thus more comfortable in recommending treatment within that arena.

Unfortunately, before the advent of the Internet and of greater patient-advocacy, it was difficult for patients to learn about options other than those offered by family physicians and the specialists they visited. Today things are different. Patients have learned how to research the latest treatment and how to become partners with their doctors.

And one of the things they are learning is that medicine is an art. There is no "one-size-fits-all" treatment plan guaranteed to work for every person in every case. There are many options with various possible outcomes. That is why there is a great deal of discussion and disagreement among physicians over whether the cost and effort of aggressive and experimental therapy is worth it if the cure rate is not very high. That is why even physicians who practice "integrative" medicine, combining conventional and alternative treatment, aren't in agreement on every issue.

Remembering this will, hopefully, give you the courage to study as many options as you can. In that way, when you agree to enter a treatment program for your particular disease, you will realize that you're doing the best you can, just as your doctor is doing the best he or she can.

Get a REAL Second Opinion

You have probably already been told to get a second, third or fourth opinion—even if your insurance doesn't cover it. We add to that suggestion the need to make certain the person you see is not a "buddy" of the person who recommended him or her. Even though the advice you receive may be just fine, doctors usually are friends with those who went to the same medical school or training program. Thus any "objective" second opinion is likely to represent the same approach. However, if you get identical opinions from two or three doctors who aren't in any way related by practice or alma mater, you can give extra weight to that option.

The person whom you ask for another opinion does not have to necessarily work in the same specialty as the specialist to whom you were first recommended. For example, if you have cancer and have been sent to an oncologist, talk with a radiologist and surgeon as well. And you may even discover new options by talking to professionals in related fields (such as nurse specialists, physicians assistants, anesthesiologists and others who have experience in your particular disease), as well as getting opinions from people who've had your disease and have survived. At the very least, you are sure to understand the whole picture much better.

A competent doctor who really cares about his patients will not be bothered by having you seek additional opinions and will even encourage you to find out as much as you can about your disease. Why? Because he knows that medicine is not an exact science. It is an art. Just as an accomplished painter uses a variety of paints to achieve the best effect with different materials, a good doctor recognizes that different treatments may have different outcomes, depending on how the person who is being treated.

© Copyright 1997, Revised 2002, Arlene F. Harder, MA, MFT